The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Why are digital scarcity and ownership so important to the business model of creators in web 3? How can an author use a wider fictional world for creative and business goals? Rae and Stephen talk about why creators need web 3 and their fantasy universe, SitkaWorld. In the intro, I mention the Creatokia podcast with Elf from the Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult, a world of story, built upon characters licensed through NFTs. I'm also creating 1 of 1 generative art NFTs from my fiction words on Opensea.io/jfpenn. This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. Rae Wojcik is a speculative fiction author, freelance editor and journalist. Stephen Poynter is an online entrepreneur, film professional and NFT enthusiast. Rae and Steven are the creators of Sitka World, a community-driven, community rewarded literature movement based around a fantasy world. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes The importance of community ownershipThe difference between web 2 and web 3 tools — and attitudesWhy digital scarcity and the ownership and resale of assets could transform the business model for creators who value their intellectual property over the long term. Rae also has a great article on Why content creators need Web3Different types of NFTs for different levelsHow the NFT model benefits readersUsing existing digital publishing options alongside blockchain and web 3 optionsHow long will adoption take? You can find Sitka World at SitkaWorld.com and on Twitter @SitkaWorldNFT. You can also check out their Discord here. Transcript of Interview with Rae Wojcik and Stephen Poynter Joanna: Rae Wojcik is a speculative fiction author, freelance editor and journalist. And Stephen Poynter is an online entrepreneur, film professional and NFT enthusiast. Rae and Steven are the creators of Sitka World, a community-driven, community rewarded literature movement based around a fantasy world. Welcome to the show, Rae and Stephen. Rae: Thank you. Stephen: Thank you. Glad to be here. Joanna: I'm very excited to talk to you about this. So let's start with, we've established that you're authors, creators. Why are you so interested in Web3? And what does Web3 even mean to you? Rae: I've been writing for most of my life, actually. And for so long, I was attracted to the idea of traditional publishing, as many of us are when we get started in this space. But over the last few years, I feel like I've gone on a different journey of thinking of what are some different ways that I can really make writing work. I was attracted more to this idea of being a creative entrepreneur, and loved reading your book, How to Make a Living with Your Writing, and starting to think of that more creatively. More recently, I've become attracted to this idea of community-driven publishing. And what I mean by that is almost taking this idea of the thousand true fans idea and thinking, how can I, instead of just sending a book out into the world to be read by people that I might never meet, trying to get it into as many hands as possible? How can I really start to build a community and a community of those people who really care about writing, care about fantasy worlds and care about my book? That's what drove me to the idea of Web3. Stephen: I think that as far as why Web3 in the first place, why would we even go that route in terms of publishing, and then sometimes it's easy for people to be in the mindset of, well, if it works already, why change it? If we can get a book on Amazon Kindle, then isn't that good enough? Beyond the community is the fundamental idea of ownership in Web3. I think that a lot of people don't really grasp all the ramifications that come with that. Because, with Web2, you never really own anything, you're just renting or licensing the right to be able to view content within a certain big tech platform. And those platforms pretty much have all of the control over the distribution, over what's on their platform, over how the finances work for that. And they end up often taking a large percentage of those finances, and you're just at the mercy of whatever distribution platform is the main one for your genre normally. With Web3, it gives more creative ownership and control for the artists, in this case, Rae, the author to be able to have more control over what she writes and how she connects with her audience, and how she sells to them and all that. Joanna: Fantastic. Let's get more specific around ‘Sitka World.' Tell us about SitkaWorld and what it is and what you hope to create around it. Rae: With ‘Sitka World,' our mission is really to bring the magic of storytelling to Web3. It started out just as a way to publish my upcoming book series, actually, which is called ‘The Sitka Saga,' which is how ‘Sitka World' got its name. But then I was thinking of it more and more. And I was realizing this doesn't have to just be a book, which is part of what the beauty of Web3 is, Web3 is so much more collaborative in many ways than many creative publishing platforms we've seen. So I started to think of how can I make this more than being just about my specific fiction work. I work as a freelance journalist, I do some author coaching. The wheels started to turn a little bit and I started to think, ‘How can I make this really a community that's not just about my work, but can be about other people's work as well.' With ‘Sitka World,' essentially, what it comes down to is it's going to be a whole community of writers helping everybody learn more about the Web3 space and being able to build a successful writing career in the Web3 space. Stephen: And to expand on that idea of bringing the magic of storytelling to Web3, that's how we best came up with a way of describing and encapsulating what our vision is because it's partly like bringing the magic of the fantasy world, which is like this is a series that Rae has been writing for over a decade, has pretty much been her go-to passion creative outlet for since she was in high school. We want to bring the messages and magic of that to Web3 in more interactive and immersive ways that are possible normally. That's one of the beauties of NFTs that maybe we can get into more later about how you can have this digital proof of ownership and you can get access to more than just a book. And you can continue to build on that, you can add more and more. When you want to be doing audiobooks and looking at graphic novels and games and metaverse stuff and artificial intelligence and the community aspects and stuff where we can really allow readers to have a more immersive journey in this fantasy world where the book is really just the starting point, and just the base layer sort of introduction to that. So that's kind of one part. The other part that Rae was saying is we really are developing this idea of what we're calling our Writers Guild, and having an inner group of writers within our community that we can help them find work like having a job gig portal, as well as different services like coaching and publishing services and helping them with networking and getting them connected in the world of Web3. They can actually either bring their own works to life, if they're publishing their own works and want to maybe launch NFTs, or build a community or brand around that, or helping connect them with other established brands that are lacking in the storytelling. A lot of brands, I think, especially in Web3, as they mature, will start to realize more the value of the intellectual property, of having a strong story and strong characters that their community will relate to, because that'll help keep their community engaged for the longer term. We want to be able to present ourselves to other brands saying, “Hey, we have this group of writers. We could help you get connected with someone that could build out stories for you,” whether that's lore stuff, or websites, books, graphic novels, comics, game narrative, all that stuff, and to really then help bring that magic and power of storytelling to the broader world of Web3. Joanna: Let's get a bit more specific, because I feel like the discussion of Web2 and Web3 can sometimes be confusing. And of course, you've mentioned things there like books and audiobooks, we have those right now, those exist right now. I presume at some point, Rae, you're going to put these out in print, which, of course, is, we could say, not web at all. They're very old technology. You've also mentioned almost being almost an education platform or something, your Writers Guild might have services, might have a job board, which could be done just with a website. I'm really into this, but I feel like people get very confused technically. It's like, ‘Why don't I just have a website, and why don't I just publish a Kindle book?' So can you try and be a bit more specific, obviously, without getting too technical. How is Web 3 different to what you can do with just Web2 tools? Rae: Absolutely. Definitely, to start out, do we want to say, Web3 is not exclusive. So if you do love publishing ebooks, if you love publishing print books, you don't have to stop doing any of that with Web3. One of the things that I like about it, and what helped me conceptualize, because I was new to all of this too, and didn't totally understand at first, but NFTs are really proof of ownership. I think what's made a lot of headlines as they've started to come out is people hear about them, and they hear, ‘Oh, NFTs, those are just really expensive JPEG images.' But that's really just what it is on a surface level. On a deeper level, an NFT can be a proof of ownership for anything, you could set it up as a proof of ownership to get into your community, if somebody owns your NFT, that's like their ticket in. You could have it where if somebody buys your NFT, if you're an author launching your book, that will give the holder royalties for your future earnings, it could give them access to really anything else in the world. That's the crazy thing about this new technology is NFTs can really be your ticket to anything. It's up to the creator just to use their imagination and think of what that anything can be. Stephen: I think that the fundamental idea going back to the idea of ownership. In Web2, I think the two main distinctions, if I were to distill it to its essence, Web2 is about platform, the platform comes first. Everything has to be created for that platform. And the platform ultimately has the control over it. Web3 is about community ownership, everyone that owns that NFT actually owns part of the network and the platform and brand. You don't have to surrender your intellectual property rights. Some do. There are some sets where if you want to go that route, as a creator, you can actually allow your holders to use the characters or whatever their NFT represents and make their own works with it and own the rights but that's not how we're doing it. And it's certainly not how you have to but they own in the actual success of the project. The biggest ramification of that is that your users actually feel more engaged. Think of it as a difference between some subscription, if it's some sort of club where you have to be paying, say, $100 a month to be part of some I don't know, golf club or something. Well, that's a subscription and it's a financial drain on you. Every month you have to keep on paying to be part of it. As soon as you leave, then you actually start saving money because now you're no longer having to pay for it. That's kind of what we've become used to with Web2. But with Web3, it's more like you pay once upfront to actually take an ownership in, say, this golf club, I'm into golfing. But there's probably some golfers out there. And now there's only say a thousand owners. If that golf club does well, and if you help it do well over time, your stake and value in that ends up actually growing, and you could resell that membership to someone else and end up actually not being any of the worse out for it financially, because you're actually now like an equity owner in that golf club instead of just a paying subscriber. Ownership changes the nature of the community. You see a lot of very engaged NFT communities for that reason, because people actually feel like they want to be part of this in the long-term, they want to help it grow it because they just feel more tied to it, rather than just being like, ‘Hey, you're my fans, so I want to make money off of you. So just pay me money each month,' which can end up being a little more of a transactional, one-sided, maybe sort of relationship. Joanna: I do think it's such a different mindset. That's why I keep asking these questions, because let's just say Amazon, as you mentioned, sort of platform-centered approach, which is we drive readers to Amazon, or Amazon has its own readership. Then the author is just one of many, many millions of authors. But the benefits of that kind of centralization are that one big company is helping build a brand. And what you were talking about there is like community ownership. So let's say ‘Sitka World' is not Amazon, obviously right now. Who knows what it could be in the future. The onus is on the community and the creators to drive readership into this world. How do you see that happening? Because I feel like I'm almost frustrated right now. Because I feel like there's not enough of a community for this stuff to take off. And you mentioned there that engaged communities might take off, like you mentioned, the golf club might take off. But there are lots of these NFT collaborative projects that don't take off. How can we bring people into this? And how are you thinking about building a world that will be successful? Because it's like starting from scratch again, basically, when many people are worried about that. How are you thinking about finding readers, finding people who want to engage in Web 3? Rae: I think that is a pretty big challenge. And I'm sure that 5, 10 years from now, there'll be plenty of people launching books on Web3, and it won't be as new as it seems. To start out with, being user-friendly is incredibly important. One of the ways we're planning to launch the book to start is with using a platform called Readl. They're an NFT book platform that allows readers to make a purchase with a credit card. So they have an online reader and with the credit card option it's going to be super accessible to people who aren't used to the space. You don't have to start to talk to people about here's how you create a crypto wallet, here's how you buy cryptocurrency, because that is so new to so many people, and can be a huge challenge. So I think having a platform that's user-friendly, and really utility focused is going to be a way to get some of those people to slowly start coming over who aren't used to the space. Stephen: And along with that, the reading experience is, of course, important. At the end of the day, we can add a lot of other things on to the book. And we're doing that with all the different, say, services or perks and collaboration. But you have to have a good book, and you have to have the reader actually want to read the book. There's been some Web3 attempts at launching books that were more just like a PDF sort of style. And a PDF isn't a good reading experience for anyone that's tried to read anything longer than a few pages on a PDF, it's not the same as a true Kindle reading app, say. But Readl is working on building out a real reading app that would compete with Amazon Kindle app reading experience. I think that's important. Some of that is just the maturation of the industry. NFTs as we know them only really came onto the scene about a year ago. And it's crazy what's happened in 12 months. Imagine where we'll be another 12 months from now, it will be certainly continue to just get better. I think that the other thing in terms of getting readers on or why would people be interested is really making sure that you're really clear with what you're providing. I see some NFTs, and this is true for any brand, but you can't just launch and be like, ‘Well, we're just going to try to have a good book and a new experience.' You have to give them a real reason to want to be part of the community. There's also a lot of NFTs brands that are just kind of like ‘Well, we'll just have you know, I don't know metaverse, and fun and money or just join our community,' and it's like, ‘But why, what sets it apart? What's your mission? Who are you serving, and what are you helping them with?‘ So I think just having a real clear mission and audience of course is key like with any business. And then growing that community and having it strongly incentivized for them to let it grow. That's where with us too, not only do you have, if you're a community holder, not only do you have the natural sort of incentive, like we discussed to want the project to do well because of an ownership stake, but we're having the royalty sharing built in where a future launches, 50% of all royalties will be given back to owner. That way, we're publishing it serially, three acts for each book, and at least three books. So it'll be over the course of the years that we're really building out this whole series. That should encourage word of mouth, as long as the books are good, and people like it, then that you basically have an army of fans that are able to help spread the word of the books to their other fantasy communities and whatnot. Joanna: Okay, loads to unpack there, which was really good. I appreciate everything you said. First of all, Readl, I also love Readl, as we're recording this in April 2022, they're still not quite ready. But I totally agree with you. It's early days, and there are different companies. And hopefully, I think it will emerge in the same way as the kind of Web2 companies, we go wide with all these different things, and I think it will be the same. So I just wanted to give another thumbs up for Readl at the moment. I wanted to ask about your business model, then you just mentioned 50%, royalty fractionalization, which if people don't understand that, it means say you sell, let's say you sell it for let's just say $10, five of those dollars after the fees, and there are always fees, five of those dollars will go to holders of that NFT smart contract for that book. Right? That is a very large royalty percentage. I'm very interested, what do you see the business model being with this? Is it just for one book, how are you thinking about the future business model? Because obviously right now, that's not your full-time income. This is a future business model. What do you see the business model being with web 3? Stephen: I think a few things to clarify with that. The 50% wouldn't be tied to an individual, but would be spread among all individuals. And actually, Readl has ways that they're building out to do this. So think of it as more like a royalty sharing pool. Joanna: Oh, no, I get that. You guys only get 50%. From the author perspective, 50% is a lot to give away. It's like a traditional publishing contract. Stephen: That's really because we see it as a community movement and kind of like a Kickstarter idea. So if the project does well, we recognize that would be because of our early supporters and the people that join in and buy into that first launch and help it do well. We can't do it without the community. And I think that the potential, even if it's 50% cut on our end, so to speak, the potential for real community movement, much outweighs the cost of that royalty share. That's part of what I love about Web3 is cutting out the middleman by taking away the power from the platform, like we're talking about Readl. They aren't a platform in the sense that Amazon is. You can't go exclusive with them, they don't get exclusive rights to your distribution or anything. They're just a tool and the actual NFT that you own is still decentralized in your wallet. So say that we ended up not liking Readl and going with someone else later down the road, that's fine. There'll be competing apps that can also view the same NFTs. It's platform agnostic because you actually own that book in a way that is not possible in Web2. [Note from Joanna: At the moment, in April 2022, you can view other NFTs on the same blockchain, but the cross-chain applications are still being worked on.] Readl doesn't own it. And they can't stop you from going to a competing platform and using it, if they have a different reading app, not Readl, but a different app. And they say, ‘Hey, you have this NFT,' maybe you minted it, or bought it through the Readl site, but if the information is still there, you can still port it out to other platforms. Readl only need to have a 2% fee, like 2% is astronomically lower than 65% for Amazon. By cutting out that power of the middleman we have a direct relationship with our readers. And then between us and the readers, we get to accrue that value of the IP, you could say, so the value of that book, instead of the majority of going to a centralized platform, it all gets to go to the author and the readers. In that sense, it's like, we're happy to share that value with our community and still be doing approximately as well as if we're going with Amazon or other platforms like that. Rae: What really drew me going back to this idea of community-driven publishing is this idea that your community with NFTs really becomes on your side. So there's so many ways that that could work. Part of that is we can collaborate with other authors. For example, you can do a launch where you collaborate with somebody else, say, you reach out to that author's community and say, ‘Okay, everybody who owns let's say you as an example, say everybody who owns like Joanna Penn's NFT, like, we'll take 100 people who own hers, and they can join our community.' So it's a great way to start to make those collaborations as well. Another thing that we didn't talk about either was the idea of secondary royalties. With NFTs, authors can actually structure it where you get secondary royalties, meaning somebody who initially bought your NFT, can go sell it to somebody else later down the road, and you'll get some of that back, which is really, really huge. Because as we know, in the traditional publishing world, you only get those initial purchases. If somebody is done with your book, they go sell it at a used bookstore, you don't see any of that money. So it's actually a really interesting way, because this is kind of the first time that we're going to start to see if the value of your intellectual property increases, the original creator can start to get in on some of that, which I find really, really intriguing. Stephen: Kind of like the example of an artist, say that if Picasso can go ahead, like sold a painting when they were young, and before they've been famous, that painting might have only sold for a few dollars. And then later on in their career now that painting's worth millions, well, do they benefit from that at all? They created that brand, and the value and their fame, and everything is something that they created, but they no longer have any ownership stake. And the person that bought it from them benefits from it, which is fine, of course, the person that bought should benefit. But it also seems like shouldn't the original artist get some benefit from that because they are the ones that grew their brand and the value of their name. I think this will be really interesting because it introduces that concept to all forms of art, not just paintings or books. It's after you release something, you as an artist, it's the norm to have the secondary royalties normally somewhere around 5% to 8% or 10%, on resales, and that can be baked into the contract so it's enforced by the blockchain forever indefinitely. When you release something out there to the world, you aren't just incentivized to keep on pumping out more and more new stuff, if you're only making money on the initial selling of it. You're incentivized to keep on growing the value of what you already put out there because you'll always have an ownership stake in it and always be benefiting from it growing in an intellectual like branding. Then it becomes the way to monetize yourself as a content creator is anything under the sun that increases the value of your brand. So anything that you're doing to increase the value of your brand, and really the sky's the limit, it doesn't have to have a direct monetization, whether you're getting on billboards, or having collaborations with other well-known projects, or getting into other forms of media, making movies or whatever it can be anything you want, that increases the value of your brand, because that'll always come back to you in the form of secondary royalties. If the original content that you created is increasing your value, then the percentage that you're getting is increasing in value. And there are NFT brands that are making thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars a day just in those secondary royalties. Rae: Which is really, really great for me, because I'm admittedly a very slow writer. As Stephen mentioned, I've been working on this series for 10 years now. So the idea of this high volume publishing, where you're putting out a new novel every single year is probably never going to work for me just because of how slow I am. So the idea of secondary royalties, I think, would be a lot better fit so that I don't feel that pressure to try to write that way. Joanna: And just to add to that, so I want people listening, if you still haven't got this yet, this ownership as a reader means that, and this is for digital books, we're talking about digital versions. If you own the copy of the book, as an NFT ebook, for example, you can then sell it to someone else. And let's say 5% goes back to the original creator. I've also seen there are these lending things coming out now with NFT. So you could potentially be lending out your special NFT books to other readers. I think that's an interesting secondary market too. I was thinking about this as a reader because of course, we have to remember the readers are the ones who are going to be hopefully buying our books, but I've been on Amazon, I got an Amazon Kindle as soon as it arrived. I was living in Australia at the time, but I have ‘bought' or licensed, nearly 3000 Kindle books, and that's not including things borrowed. So basically, for over a decade I have been buying, I buy books every day. I'm looking at that going, okay, I knew I was locked in to the platform, but I really locked into the platform because if I decide I don't want to read on Kindle anymore, I lose all those books, because they are not mine. What we're seeing with NFTs is if I buy your book, Rae, number one ‘Sitka World,' then I own that, and I can in a decade's time, as you say, I can look on whatever blockchain and find that again, I can sell it. I actually own that. And as you say the NFT shows that I do and that's in the smart contract. This really is an incredibly different way of thinking about digital. I feel like people haven't necessarily understood that from the hardcore reader perspective even, it is a very good business model, right? Rae: Absolutely. And that goes back to what you said earlier, too, about how it's so early now. We don't know which reading apps in Web3 are going to take off. So like you said, if you purchase an NFT book, that is 100%, yours, so even if 10 years from now, let's say you start reading on Readl, but 10 years from now, they're not around and you want to read on something else, because that book is 100% yours, you can port it over to whatever reading app you're using at the time. Joanna: I think that's really important. The other thing, talking there, I wanted to ask you both about what you think about NFT books. I have a thing about digital scarcity. I don't want to publish 1 of 50,000. I want to publish one of ones, but also maybe one of hundreds. For people listening, we're just limiting the number of this edition of book. By limiting the number, we're making it more valuable. [Note from Joanna: I create 1 of 1 generative art NFTs which I sell here on OpenSea.] Some of my 1 of 1 NFTs, generative art made from words from my fiction as j.f. penn I see some platforms going down the route of making them unlimited and putting very low prices on things, which I just go back and forwards. I'm not really sure. So what do you think? Maybe we just do all of these different things. What are you going to do with your books? Stephen: I think that's very much a balance that we've been considering. Because on one level as for building a brand and following and, from our standpoint, getting the message of our books out there, because the books have a lot of important messages that we want the world to read. So you want widespread distribution on that side. But at the same time, in terms of having a real tight community and creating that value, you need to have some form of scarcity, which is something that Web3 has introduced that Web2 never really had. In Web 2, for any sort of content, it's very hard to have scarcity, because you can just copy and paste things and things do go viral. And then it's like, as soon as something gets leaked, it's out there, whereas Web3, you can't have a real sense of there are only so many owners in this. And that's the limit. What we're doing is a dual approach where there will be a core set of NFT holders that will give them more access to the online community or services that we're wanting to provide, the royalty sharing, all that will be for what we're referring to as author class NFTs, more built for the author community. And then there will be the reader class NFTs where it's just a manuscript. And for those ones in Readl, we don't know exactly how many will have it, we might be able to have it be unlimited in Readl. But those will be more like traditionally priced, might be $15 for your copy of your book. And it doesn't come with royalty sharing or with any of the other benefits. It's just the manuscript just like you would on Kindle, and so that we'd want to get out to as many people as possible while still having the scarcity for the people that are really in the community. Joanna: I really think this is important. For people listening, if you're thinking about doing an NFT book, please don't price it at what you would have priced the Kindle or the Kobo or the Apple copy, because again, readers don't own those copies. I think it's so important that we set a floor price for even, I don't even know how you can have an unlimited NFT book, I feel like there has to be some number. It's so new, we don't even know this, right? We don't even know whether you can set a limit. The smart contract to me has to have terms on it in terms of how many there are, how long the smart contract will last, and all of these things. But what I don't want to see is this race to the bottom that we've had with the digital abundance model, which is essentially an unlimited, the subscription model for digital which we don't want that. We want it to be these are digitally scarce assets. And I guess that's the other thing. These are assets, right? NFTs, certainly, I think in the U.S. and here in the UK, are classed as assets. So they are different to what we think of as products. What are your thoughts around that? Rae: I think this is going back to where that idea of value comes in. Authors will have to start having this mindset shift that when you're publishing in the Web3 world, you're not just giving people a manuscript, you're giving them access to a community, something that can be resold, you're giving them opportunities for fan fiction, however you want to structure it, it is something that brings more value to your reader than just reading a manuscript. That's where we were talking about too, that has the potential for your intellectual property for your NFTs to grow in value over time. And as they do grow in value, that becomes an asset to your readers and if they want to resell it later then perhaps the price has gone up. It has to be starting this fundamental mindset shift there that we're not just putting out unlimited work for everybody to read. This really is something that has the potential to benefit our readers. Stephen: I think as both an opportunity and a responsibility. Because if you're a creator and putting out these assets, you can't think of it as just a product where I just sell it and forget about it. And that's where we see a lot of NFTs that haven't done well is because that's what creators did. They thought, ‘I'm just going to put it out there and just hope it sells and goes up in value.' And it's like, no, it's not going to just magically go up in value, if you aren't putting in the work. It is a full-time job, essentially, to manage a brand of any form, including NFTs. If you're creating this new class of assets, so to speak, for your community, then you're essentially signing up for the long-term responsibility of increasing that. It may not be for everyone, if you just want to sell something and forget about it, then maybe more traditional launches are appropriate, or you just then sell it and price it more as a traditional mass market paperback book just on the blockchain and you aren't promising any other benefits or expectation of it doing well, long-term. You're just like, this is just another way of buying it on the blockchain. I think that's definitely something to consider in terms of figuring out what's really your goals and structure long-term for why you're launching a brand. Joanna: I actually disagree with you, though, on this, I think the community NFT is completely different to the asset NFT. I think that just an NFT book, which I will have as scarce, will be something that the reader can, as I've said, the reader will buy, they will be able to read it and they will be able to resell it. And also they'll be able to let's just say ‘flex' in the metaverse, put on their bookshelf and the background when they do whatever the metaverse Zoom equivalent is going to be, that kind of thing. I think that as a reader, that's what I want. I have to be honest, I'm not really a community-type person. I just want to create my stuff, and I will do limited edition scarce digital editions. And they will be what they are. They don't have to have a community token. What you guys are doing is actually a different model, which is a community movement, community site. And so you're incorporating different types of NFTs. But I think that's really important. Because for some people listening, there'll be more like me, which is well, I don't want to do all of that kind of thing. I can just do just these limited editions, scarce resellable NFT books, right? Stephen: Absolutely. I think that's a really good clarification. Joanna: I also did want to ask, you've mentioned longevity, I think not just for the community angle, it is also for our intellectual property value, as you mentioned, and that this is not just a ‘fly by night get rich quick scheme,' which I think is one of the issues around the news articles on NFTs is like, it's a get rich quick scheme. It's a scam. It's all of this kind of thing. There's a lot of fear of, ‘Oh, I'm just going to get scammed with this stuff.' How are you communicating long-term value, and how are you trying to reach out to people who might be interested and also helping with people's fear? Rae: That's what we've seen with the initial just super excitement about the NFT movement. And it has been a huge bubble, as we all know. Personally, I am all for that bubble bursting, because I think when any new technology comes along, people get super excited about it, and start to speculate about it before the real utility comes out. But it's really once that initial kind of frenzy of investing starts to burst that you see, ‘Hey, actually, there is some real value and some real utility behind this technology,' which is what we're going to be communicating to our community, especially in our sense too and for ‘Sitka World,' this is going to be a series that we're planning to launch out over months over the course of years. We're being very upfront with people saying, this is a long-haul project. This isn't just like a, you invest in this and hope to flip it tomorrow. This is we're in here for the long haul to build that kind of community. Joanna: Are you going to publish these books in the old-fashioned way, and have them on Amazon and all of the other sites as well? Rae: Yes, but after we've published to the community first. We're going to do Web3 first, and then also do Web2 and have all of those options out there. Joanna: That's fantastic. I do want to come back on what you said about the bubble bursting; I agree with you. I was working back in 2000 in the dot com, boom. And I remember when loads of my friends went to work for various dot com companies, and then 2000, 2001. And then the whole thing came crumbling down. And everyone was like, ‘Well, that was a mistake.' But now of course, we're 20 years later, which is kind of hard to believe. And we're all making a living on using the internet and it's become core. So I guess that would be my final question because we're almost out of time, which is, how long do you think this is going to take because of course we don't want it to be 2001? We'd rather it was a bit later than that in terms of, we don't want to wait 20 years for this to become a mature situation. What do you think in terms of the timeline of adoption for web 3? Stephen: That's anyone's guess, of course, we don't have any magic special foreknowledge there. I do think that what we see is that the rate of technological change keeps on appreciating. I was reading an article about that recently about just how not only does technology keep on increasing, but the rate of change of that increase keeps on increasing. The amount of change that we've seen in the last five years is much more drastic than the amount of change, say, between 1900 and 1905. Even now, just with the power of computing too, all the and artificial intelligence and all that, we're seeing massive growth in the way that Web3 is already being used. Like I said, like NFT is pretty much I mean, the crypto punks, whatever, they were kind of like an experiment a few years ago, but really NFTs started gaining any sort of real attention about the start of last year. A lot of stuff behind the scenes that, I'm in on calls and messaging with a lot of different project devs every day, there's so many really cool stuff being built behind the scenes, but it's just not in the public yet. Because it takes still many months, years to develop good projects. A lot of the quality projects are still in development. Even then, once they're released, it takes a while for it to gain user adoption and awareness. I would say from what I'm seeing, we're probably talking within the next year, I think we'll start to really see some more mass adoption. And certainly within a few years, a lot of those tools and all the different areas of the web that really help people with Web3 will be functioning and be out there. I don't think it's going to be decades this time is what I would say. Joanna: Rae, of course, you've been writing these books for you said a decade, you must be just desperate to get them out into the world and all of this. What do you think in terms of the adoption? Rae: I've been attracted more to the idea of serial publishing. We're going to start out by publishing just Act I of my book following the three-act story structure. So that will be coming out. But then the whole process of getting all of these out will likely take several years, which I'm prepared for on the one hand, like you said, 10 years is a long time to be writing a series. On the other hand, I'm also a very slow writer. So it gives me like a lot of time to be able to really hash out the stories to be what I want it to be, because as I've been working on it for 10 years, I also want it to be the best it can be. So not having that pressure to be constantly putting out work after work right away is actually really great for me. Joanna: That has been such an interesting chat. I really appreciate everything you're doing to also educate the community. And maybe we'll have you back again in another year. We can see how much further you are. For now, tell people where they can find you and everything you do online. Rae: Our project has a website called sitkaworld.com. I also have my own website with my writings called northernwords.blog. And I actually recently published an article called Why Content Creators Need Web3, which goes into a lot more of these ideas a lot more thoroughly that we've talked about as far as the utility for Web3. We also have a Twitter for ‘Sitka World' which is SitkaWorldNFT. We do have a private Discord. Like I mentioned, the community aspect, that's not going to be open all the time, it will be invite only, but whenever this podcast is up, we will share it on our Twitter and we can share a link so if there's anybody listening who wants to join, they can join that way. Joanna: Thanks so much for your time. It's been great to talk to you. Stephen: Absolutely. Thank you, Joanna. Rae: Thank you, Joanna.The post Creating A Fictional World In Web 3 With Rae Wojcik and Stephen Poynter first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you turn one idea into a short story or expand it into a novel? How can you find a writing process that brings you joy for the long term? Jessie Kwak talks about writing craft tips in this interview. In the intro, I comment on Andy Jassy's letter to shareholders and the importance of long-term thinking. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. Jessie Kwak is the author of gangster sci-fi supernatural thrillers and nonfiction for creatives. She's also a ghostwriter and freelance marketing copywriter. Her latest book is From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Practice That Brings You Joy. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Planning, plotting, and discovery writingFinding ideas, and turning them into short stories, or expanding them into novels Tips for dealing with critical voiceDeveloping themeThe pros and cons of working with small pressUsing Kickstarter as a pre-orderHow to put the joy back into writingJessie was also on the show previously, talking about From Chaos to Creativity: Productivity for Writers. You can find Jessie Kwak at JessieKwak.com and on Twitter @jkwak Transcript of Interview with Jessie Kwak Joanna: Jessie Kwak is the author of gangster sci-fi supernatural thrillers and nonfiction for creatives. She's also a ghostwriter and freelance marketing copywriter. Her latest book is From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Practice That Brings You Joy. Welcome back to the show, Jessie. Jessie: Thank you for having me. This is super fun. Joanna: Always good to talk to you. You've been on the show before. We talked a bit about your journey and how you manage everything. So we're just going to get straight into the topic today. Now, I should say upfront, this is a really great book, there's so much in it and I found it very hard to choose the questions. I want to start with the plotting versus discovery writing because there's this tension for both fiction and nonfiction. You say in the book that “every author plans, but the extent to which they plan differs.” Talk about planning, and how we can find the best way for our writing style. Jessie: I think there tends to be a lot of emphasis on what's the right way to write, should I outline, am I supposed to be doing this or that or the other thing. My very first piece of advice, as we get into talking about writing advice, is, don't really worry about what's right. Start with what your strengths are. Start with what you enjoy about the process, and start experimenting from there. Definitely don't throw out the things that you enjoy just because you're like, ‘Oh, I read in a book that I'm supposed to do it a different way.' When I talk about planning, I really came to writing as a pantser. And I didn't do a lot of outlining. I would try it and then I would just immediately go in a weird direction as soon as I started writing. I'm very much a discovery writer. Unless I am literally typing or putting pencil to paper and writing out a scene, I don't know what is going to come out of that scene. Doesn't matter how much I outline. But I have tried to incorporate a lot more planning into my discovery process. For example, you don't have to plot out the whole book, but maybe you could plot out this act that you're working on, or the first half of a book. My mind was blown at a conference a few years back when another author was like, ‘I only ever plot out the first half of any book, because my outline always goes off the rails.' It's like, ‘Oh, you can do that?' Or you can try planning at the scene level. That's something that I find really helps me. Taking five minutes to jot out, this is what I want to do with the scene, some sensory details, basic scene blocking of who goes where and does what. If you are a heavy planner, maybe experiment with giving yourself a little bit more flexibility. Experiment with how you are coming up with that outline. Are you going into a spreadsheet and plotting out every detail? Or try being maybe a little bit more freeform and see if that helps at all. And if it doesn't, that's fine, you don't have to, you can be the spreadsheet outline, or you can be the complete pantser. But playing with what other people do, I think can really help. Joanna: And it's interesting because you've been on the show talking about productivity, and I know how much work you get done. Knowing that you're incredibly organized in your nonfiction side. I feel like we've got a lot in common in our nonfiction. But I feel like, with my fiction, I am a discovery writer, but I am so different with my fiction than I am with my nonfiction. So I wondered if that's the same with you? Are you a completely different Jessie when you write fiction to nonfiction? Jessie: Yes, I am. I definitely am more relaxed and letting the words flow and not being so detailed in the very first draft when I'm writing fiction. Whereas with nonfiction, it tends to be a lot more outline-y. I write a lot of blog posts and articles. And so in that case, we do really want to say, ‘Okay, here's the three points I'm going to make. And then I'm going to flesh out each section.' But with fiction, I will let myself wander a lot more. Joanna: I feel like the word plan can be a difficult word. I certainly find it difficult with fiction, because I feel like my muse wants to do what it does. But equally, it's funny you mentioned that person who plots the first half of the book. I plan I guess in my head, I know the opening scene, which is always something… I like a prologue in action-adventure thriller. I like a prologue where something bad happens and then, Chapter 1, we see the protagonist. So I always have that prologue, that set-piece in some awesome location. And then I often will have or pretty much always have my climax, which is another set-piece and another awesome location. And then the middle bit, it's everything in between just kind of wanders around. So even the whole idea of planning, it doesn't matter, does it? It's whatever works for us. Jessie: Yeah, and for me, I'm using a five-act structure for my books, the series that I'm working on right now. So I have the thing that happens at the end of each act for all five acts like where are we going to commercial break here? I kind of what's happening there. Beyond that, I do plot out an act level and I say, ‘Okay, in this act, we're going to do this.' I know some things that are happening ahead of here. But the thing that I find is I can't keep going, unless I have a good strong foundation of what I've written before. I tend to cycle through a book like, I will write Act I, I give to my husband, he reads it, he gives me some feedback, I rewrite it, then I write Act II and do the same thing. I was at a writing retreat this weekend and there was a word count competition among everybody. And so I had to write Acts IV and V and I was like, ‘You know what, I'm at the end of the book, I know what's going to happen, I will just write as fast as I can, and I'm going to win this competition.' But I got to the end of Act IV, and I got stuck and I couldn't write anymore in Act V. And I was like, ‘Oh, you just have to do your process, Jessie. You can't force it.' That's an example of experimentation. Start with your strengths and don't throw your strength out, which for me, is this cyclic process. Joanna: That is a really good point. I would hate that word count contest. I always feel that's what happens in NaNoWriMo, as well; there's some people who always do like 50,000 words in one day or something. Jessie: Oh, my, gosh. Joanna: I've only done NaNoWriMo once back in originally, when I started Stone of Fire. I only ‘wrote' 20,000 words in a month and only about 5,000 words of those ended up in the book. My strength is not hardcore words done. It's interesting you were on a writer's retreat, and they were presumably assuming that you could just write a lot of words. Isn't this one of the issues in the writing community? We compete on things that aren't necessarily our strengths? Jessie: Yes, absolutely. There was the word count board that was going up every day. One woman wrote 40,000 words in the four days that we were there, and I was just like, well, as soon as I saw her numbers going up I was like, ‘Well, there's no competition here.' Joanna: I'm just going to give up now. I guess word count might kind of come into my next question. You have a great section on ideas. I know some people struggle with ideas. Let's assume people have lots of ideas. How can we flesh an idea into a story? And also, how do we know what that story is? Is it a short story? Or is it a series or standalone? We've got an idea. Did you see the wreck of a Shackleton's ship just got discovered? [BBC] Jessie: Oh, yeah. Joanna: Obviously, I'm like, ‘Wow, that's cool. What kind of story could that be?' How do we take a seed of an idea and flesh that out? Jessie: One thing that works really well, for me is freewriting about it or journaling on it. Just getting away from the computer and playing with the idea on paper, until it starts expanding and unfolding. Another thing that I've been experimenting with lately is using tarot cards. That was partly inspired by your podcast with Caroline Donahue on tarot, I think it was from a few years back. It gives you the sort of interesting imagery that will combine with maybe the idea you had, and spark or your brain going in a bunch of different directions. So those are two tools that I tend to use when it comes to fleshing out an idea. Another really good thing to try is keeping a collection file, whether that's on your computer, or whether that's articles you might physically cut out of a newspaper. Or images you might print out, and collecting all this imagery and words and ideas in one place and watching that accrete and grow over time. That can be a really interesting way of building on a single story idea that you might have and being inspired by the world around you. Joanna: I use the Things app and I'm always, always finding stuff. It might be links to an article or it might be a quote or it might be just what about this or. So I keep lots and lots of notes and that's just on my phone. I have journals and things but they're almost fragments, aren't they? Snippets that you find in the world. Jessie: Yes. I think it's really fun to see how those start to combine and grow with each other. It's almost like throwing a bunch of seeds in a garden and then seeing what starts to pop up. Except that with writing, the seeds will join with each other and come up with a weird hybrid. Joanna: Yes, and that's what originality really is, isn't it? Because, of course, it's not original, like romance. Somebody meets somebody or more than one somebody and there's trouble and then they all get together or whatever. That's not original. What's original is all the little things we add to make it our work. Jessie: Absolutely. Joanna: Let's just come back to the Shackleton idea, because I want us to try and give an example. I'll put a link in the show notes. But essentially, Shackleton's lost ship was found last week in the Antarctic, and this is an undiscovered shipwreck 107 years after it disappeared. This is very cool, right? So this is I'm sure it's an idea for lots of people that's why I'm going to put it out there. If we had that seed of an idea, so underwater wreck rediscovered, how would we know? Or how would we turn that into, let's say, a short story? Or how would we turn that idea into something much bigger? Jessie: One of the skills that you start to acquire as an author is knowing how much story can fit in a container. And this is something that I had to learn and it took me forever to figure out. I tried to write a short story and I would try to include, okay, here's this big geopolitical event, and then here's this international scandal. And then here's this person also has a conflict with like their father, and then their boyfriend's breaking up with them or whatever. I'm trying to write a 2,000-word short story with all of that, that's not going to work. If you were going to take the Shackleton's ship idea, and asking yourself if you wanted to write a short story, what is one of the smallest problems that could come that my protagonist could have about this? If you were writing a scientist who's discovering it, you could write a novel about the office politics and the international concern over who found the ship and who should own the ship. This huge history and you could have this backstory of involving flashbacks to Shackleton's journey and things like that. Or you could say, ‘Okay, my protagonist, this is their very first expedition, and they really need to prove themselves because of X, Y, or Z. And how does this event help them either accomplish that goal or change their goal into something else?' Narrowing your focus into that, the biggest problem you're trying to solve in a single-story, I think can really help scale your idea up or down. Joanna: And also the number of characters that you have. Jessie: Absolutely. Joanna: Yes, so like you said, let's take a deep-sea scuba diver, or some submariner. I'm not quite sure how deep it is. But let's say a submariner and they're piloting the ship and it's going to go down. The short story is potentially there was an emergency and they have to overcome their fear or something like that. I like quest action-adventure thrillers, so in my head, the longer novel idea is the submariner goes down, and they find a box in the wreck. And they get the box back up, and they open the box, and they find a map. And thus begins an adventure through Antarctica. But then there's more people, there's more plot points, and immediately, you get something much bigger than 2,000 words. So as you say, what's the smallest story unit that you can make with this idea? I personally think the Shackleton thing is probably going to be novel size. What do you reckon? Jessie: Probably. Especially if we were working on this book together, I would say the map is actually leading to some sort of alien artifact and I'm going to throw the sci-fi element in there. And now we're going to have this like a big intergalactic thing that happens, so definitely a novel. Joanna: Okay, that's good. Obviously, coming back to your book, it is From Big Idea to Book. I do think that we've come up with what is possibly a big idea. Anyone listening, you're welcome to turn it into a book. I think this is another thing, isn't it, about attitude? You and I've been doing this long enough. We met years ago now in Oregon, and I feel like when you've been doing this long enough, you don't mind. Or are you happy to throw out ideas? Because even if you and I both wrote those books that we just talked about, they'd be completely different. Ideas are abundant. Jessie: I really think so. There are definitely ideas that I have stolen from other people or borrowed or whatever the polite artistic term would be. I don't have time to write everything that I might possibly have an idea for. So if I read a book where somebody found this alien artifact in the Shackleton ship and ran with it. And they were like, ‘Oh, I listened to your podcast,' I'd be like, ‘Awesome, because I wanted to read that story, but I don't have time to write it.' Joanna: Exactly. Although, even if six thriller writers took it and had the box and opened the box, I bet we'd all put different things in the box. It's actually a good writing prompt for everyone listening, what is in the box? Jessie: Yeah. That can be a fun anthology. Joanna: Actually that's a good point. When you do a Shackleton anthology, but this is what's so fun about story ideas. And this is what I think I want people to consider, anything you look at could turn into a story, and you get to decide the angle, right? You picked an alien. And I'm never going to write about aliens. I say never but who knows, but I'm not into sci-fi. But you went that way, I went to the thriller side. That's the personal choice of ideas, too, isn't it? Jessie: Right, it's the interest that you bring to it. But then it's also your past experience, and the things that you see in the world are going to be different than the things that I see in the world. The details that you're going to notice, the emotional response you're going to bring to it. That's what I think is so fascinating about writing. There's everyone's retelling fairytale stories. There's so many fairytale retellings, and all of them are so different. Joanna: That's a really good point. I don't read those, to be honest. But I know what you mean. Even take something that's at the cinema right now, ‘The Batman.' Seriously, how come they are just rebooting this again? You could say it's a nightmare, they're still doing the same idea over and over again. But on the other hand, they are all different, they are different characters, they are different sort of themes and all of that. So yes, we can take these ideas and do different things. But you also have a great section on mindset. We've touched on mindset. But let's say we've got this brilliant Shackleton story, and we write it down. And inevitably, our words just don't come out the way we want, especially on the first pass, they're like, ‘Oh, this is terrible. How can we deal with that critical voice that says, ‘Everything you do is terrible,' at the same time is also balancing that with improving our craft? Jessie: On occasion, throw out questions to other writers as I was working on this book. This was one that I threw out on Twitter and said, ‘How does everyone deal with critical voice?' I got the most responses to this question because it's something everyone deals with. One of my favorite things people would do was just put a sticky note on their laptop that said, ‘This is a discovery draft,' or, ‘This is my bad writing.' So you see it and you're like, ‘Okay, right, this doesn't have to be good.' Or practicing bad writing was another thing that I kept hearing from people; the idea of doing morning pages. Letting yourself write badly, and doing it in a cheap journal or something where it's not your beautiful leather-bound journal where all the words have to be preserved for posterity. Giving yourself that mental cue that, it's okay to write badly here. One thing that I like is using a different tool like, I mentioned, the cheap notebook. If you give me a beautiful notebook, I am just instant writer's block, but give me a little spiral-bound notebook and I can write forever. Or the AlphaSmart Neo, one of those little word processors that they used to use in school that doesn't have a screen and it just has a few lines of text. Gets you away from where you write your finished product. And puts you in a space where you are just going to the word mines and pulling out the words that you can use to build the finished product later. That's how I like to look at it. I'm putting sand in the sandbox, and then I will build a sandcastle, but you can't build the sandcastle without the sand first. Joanna: I use Scrivener to write and I feel like it's about trust in the process. Once you've been through this creative cycle enough times, you know that critical voice is just part of the process. It's almost like you have to learn to write alongside it as opposed to try and banish it. So we don't say go away forever. We say, ‘Okay, trust the process.' And critical voice comes in when we edit. So that's fine. Also, I personally, I don't use beta readers. I use professional editors. So I feel like as part of my process, I will always have someone who will stop it being terrible, you know what I mean? Jessie: I agree with that. Joanna: It's finding a process that saves you from thinking that that awfulness will go out in the world. Jessie: I find myself very often when I'm at a place where I'm like, ‘Oh, this doesn't feel like it's sparkly and amazing prose.' And I'm like, ‘You know what, this is still going to my editor. Kiera's going to look at it, she's going to fix things. And then I will have one more chance to do a pass and make it like, beautiful and gleaming.' And I'm just like, ‘Okay, this is where I stop and send it off.' Having a professional editor who you trust is amazing. Joanna: I totally agree. Let's stick with editing because you talk about rediscovering and developing the core idea in your draft during this editing and revision. I find this interesting, because, in fact, I think Stephen King talks about this in On Writing, the book everyone needs to read, which is that theme that emerges later. Some authors obviously decide on a theme and then write something to a theme. But I'm definitely one of those who's like, I don't even know what's happening until later as a discovery writer. What do you mean by rediscovering and developing the core idea? Jessie: I definitely agree with Stephen King about the theme emerging later as you're either in the revision process or maybe near the end of the book. That's often where I'm like, ‘Well, I've used this getting swept away by the sea metaphor, a lot of times, maybe my theme is about your life destabilizing, and how do you fix that? Interesting.' One thing I find helps is getting some distance from the book, and from the actual words that are on the page and start thinking about the story more as a whole. One way you can do that is printing out your first draft and then reading through it with a cup of tea and a journal. Not a red pen, you're not editing, you're just you're writing down what you're noticing, as you're reading through. Or telling a story to a friend can be another really helpful way to do that. One thing that I really love is writing your back cover copy, and just saying, ‘This is what the story is about.' It also helps you focus in on what readers you're going after, as well. Again, at this writing retreat I was at this weekend, one woman said that she always writes a review of her book, just like a professional reviewer would. And she used to work as a professional reviewer. So that's kind of her method anyways. She writes about, here's the strengths of the book, here's why you're going to love it. It was a little lackluster over here. But this author is really more drawn to these sorts of things. I love that because she includes those highlights, and the like, ‘Eh, this is maybe where the book fell down a little bit.' Because you can't do everything perfectly all the time and you're not trying to write for everyone. To be able to say, ‘This book isn't necessarily for readers of Iain Banks who want these big weird sci-fi ideas. But if you love like great characters, and fast-paced, twisty plots, you're really going to love these books.' It helps me at least, because speaking specifically with my books. ‘I don't have to be Iain Banks. My reviewers love my characters. They don't care about did I invent this crazy new alien species?' Joanna: That's really important is focusing in and again, like we said, It's about your curiosity, and what you enjoy as a reader, and the experience you like to deliver in your books. I picked Shackleton there because I just read an undersea thriller, I love undersea thrillers. And I'm like, ‘Yeah, I've got an idea for an under…' I've written a number of short stories underwater, and it's like, ‘Okay, that's really cool.' We have to keep tapping into that, what we love. I like that you say develop the core idea because it's in that editing process that you can go and layer in some more symbols, or some more backstory. Or foreshadowing anything that helps layer on that core idea, not so it's really obvious and on the nose. But it just is adding things in to make it richer and deepen it. Jessie: Yes, you're just adding in more little layers of notes and color, and things that just create richer, deeper experiences people are reading through. Joanna: Have you seen ‘The Crown' on Netflix? Jessie: No, I haven't. Joanna: Oh, okay. It was a big series on Netflix, but we just watched their fourth series right now, I've watched it for the second time. What we noticed on the second way through is how much metaphor they layer in the background of the scenes. I'm learning a lot about storytelling from it, because of the way they're using visuals in the background. They might have a discussion about Princess Diana while someone is slaughtering a beast. And you're like, ‘Okay, I can see the metaphor.' When you can see it, it feels heavy, but we didn't see it the first time around. I feel like in our books it's good to layer in things that perhaps people don't notice as they read through. But it comes through in the visual effects we're using and the dialogue we're using. We're talking about real craft here, I know. That's the kind of thing I'm thinking about now trying to deepen my books in that way. Jessie: I interviewed Rachael Herron for this book. I talked specifically about editing with her because she's so good at it, and has spoken quite a bit about it. One of the things that she said was if she is writing a book where the theme is, say, mother-daughter relationships and she has a scene where the characters are walking through a mall, and talking about something, she might have in the original draft written a couple teenagers goofing off in the background. Instead, why not have it be a mom with a little girl toddler who's pulling away from her hand and racing away while the mom's calling after her? That's the thematic element that she's trying to get at. So even this little scene in the background, ‘Oh, wait, here's the place where I can layer that in a little bit better.' Joanna: That is exactly right. And Rachael is a genius. Jessie: She is. Joanna: Everyone should go listen to her podcast. Your book is fantastic. I also wanted to talk about how you published it, because you're a hybrid author with indie and traditionally published books. This book is out with Microcosm Publishing. I noticed because, of course, I have a copy. And I was like, ‘Wow, this is really nice art in here from this publishing house, which I've not seen before.' It's out of Portland in Oregon. So presumably, it's quite funky. You did a Kickstarter for it, which we're going to talk about. Tell us about the pros and cons of working with a small press and why you decided to go that way. Jessie: I have nothing but amazing things to say about Microcosm Publishing, they are like you said, they're very funky. They have this DIY punk aesthetic. They originally started, I think, almost about 30 years ago. The founder, Joe Biel, he would create scenes and then bike with them on the back of his bike to a punk bar, and then sell them off the counter of the punk bar. From there, he built this incredible, tiny little publishing empire. And he and his partner, Elly Blue, they're both incredibly business-savvy people. They obviously, as you mentioned, do fantastic design work, really cool little artwork inside all the books. They run their own distribution. They've got a dedicated sales team that's working to get books into obviously bookstores, but also unique places like gift shops, because they have a lot of books that would be a good gift sort of thing. A store that might sell plants, they also will have Microcosm's books on how to garden, things like that. One of the reasons that I started working with them, A, I was friends with Elly. And so when I brought up the idea for this book, I'd been thinking about self-publishing it, and she was like, ‘That sounds like something that would be perfect for Microcosm. We'd love to take this book if you want to publish it.' Or as…sorry, actually speaking of From Chaos to Creativity, which was the first book, I published with them. I immediately said, ‘Yes,' because I am a freelancer, as my half-day job, and a fiction writer is my other half-day job. I'm already split between these two worlds, and I'm spending all this time trying to build up my fiction audience. I knew realistically, I don't have time to try to build a nonfiction audience as well in this creative productivity space. And I certainly don't have time to try to get call bookshops, and gift shops all around the world and try to get my books in there. So I just knew, working with Microcosm, they were going to be able to promote this book way better than I ever could. So it was kind of a no-brainer, in that case with them. Joanna: That's so interesting, because basically, what you've said is, I've got these two brands, your freelance brand, and your fiction brand, and you just could not do another brand, essentially. Jessie: Right. Joanna: A lot of people do ask me about how many pen names should you have? I often say I struggle enough with two with J.F. Penn for my fiction and Joanna Penn for my nonfiction. It sounds like a similar issue, in a sense, and you're kind of thinking, ‘Well, I just can't do more under almost another brand, even if it's the same name.' But I think that's so fascinating because that's not a reason I've heard although, I guess you could say it's, I don't want to do the marketing. Does that mean they're doing all the marketing? Obviously you're doing this interview. Are you doing other marketing for them? Jessie: Essentially, all the marketing that I'm doing is this kind of publicity stuff. Podcasts or writing articles for different places. I still do a really small amount of content marketing to build this creative productivity brand. But they're doing any sort of advertising; they've got a big newsletter there at events, pushing my books in person. They're doing all the marketing in that aspect. Joanna: Would you ever consider a small press or a big publisher for your fiction? Jessie: I think for my fiction, at this point, I would consider a big publisher. I think a small press, I don't know that they could do it better than what I'm doing for myself, because I am doing that for myself. Whereas I feel like I could do a decent job with the content marketing and stuff for the nonfiction if I was really focused on it. But again, with the distribution Microcosm, just they have me beat completely, there's no way that I could get that level of distribution for at least for physical books. For fiction, I think the place that I would look for a hybrid publishing opportunity in fiction would be a larger publisher who would have a bigger audience and be able to promote my books in ways that I can't get to at this point. But I think a small press with fiction, I don't know if that would be the right fit. Joanna: That idea of fit is really interesting because essentially, you've assessed what you can do and what your strengths are. And then you've looked for a partner who can do things that you can't. I really feel this is what we need to be doing as indies now, I've come to this realization, I keep coming to it, but we cannot do everything ourselves. We want to be independent, but that doesn't mean working alone. Does it? We work with other people to achieve our goals. Jessie: Absolutely. Working with somebody who was on the same page as you, I think is really important. That I feel very aligned from a philosophical standpoint, and from an indie writer sort of standpoint with the team at Microcosm. Joanna: Yeah, they do look, as I said, super funky. Jessie: They're fantastic. They have so many fun books. They're doing a bunch of queer werewolf erotica right now. It's awesome. Everything they do is so fun. Joanna: That is, and also the Kickstarter. So you did or they did a Kickstarter, and you did a little video for it. What's so funny is we talk right now, Brandon Sanderson's epic, Kickstarter is still running and it's like over 25 million or something. [Sanderson's 2022 Kickstarter closed at US$41 million!] I feel like a lot of authors now want to do Kickstarter. But also I feel it might be easier with nonfiction to get some traction because it's kind of obvious what you're going to get. Whereas fiction, you really need to be a fan. I've got a book right here that I supported on Kickstarter that I don't know the author at all, have no connection with the author, it's just I like the title. And it's a nonfiction business book. So I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm going to try that.' Tell us about the Kickstarter and any tips for that. Jessie: As you mentioned, it was really Microcosm that did the Kickstarter. So I don't want my first tip to be, have somebody who can do it for you. Joanna: That's a good tip though. Jessie: They do. They kickstart all of their new books and it's their way of getting pre-orders out for the books, and building their audience. So they've been doing this forever. Essentially, all I needed to do, I went down to their office and recorded a little video and they were like, ‘Why don't you just like go dance and twirl in among the books.' I'm like, ‘Sweet, let's do it.' So it was a really, really fun silly video. And then I was also promoting it to my own audience. So that's kind of the aspect that I did. One of the things with Kickstarter, because we did this for both From Big Idea to Book and then From Chaos to Creativity, having the stretch goals that can get people excited. For example, with From Chaos to Creativity we added on a workbook halfway through because we were brainstorming ideas for a stretch goal. And that workbook I think was super, super popular. We didn't end up doing that with From Big Idea to Book. I don't know if it would have worked out in the same way. The stretch goal that we did for that one was, I think it was like if we got to 300 backers, then people could be eligible to have a Zoom call with me and I do a little presentation. We didn't quite make it there. I think it just wasn't as exciting to people. We're all on Zoom all day long. So maybe that was part of it. Everyone's like, ‘Oh, Zoom.' But coming up with something that adds more value in maybe a more tangible way than say the hangout obviously wasn't as valuable. That's one tip. Joanna: I've just looked it up on Kickstarter. There were 281 backers pledging over 9,000 US dollars to bring that to life. I think that's brilliant because we hear the Brandon Sanderson 25 million or whatever and we think that's what you have to do. But what this is essentially, as you said, these are pre-orders on a nonfiction book. And okay, so it exceeded the goal of 7,000. Do you know how they put those numbers on it? Do they normally do that kind of $7,000? Or is the idea to set it low enough that it will fund regardless? Jessie: I think the idea is to set it low enough that funds regardless, because as we said there, it's more of a preorder. And the book's coming out, it's not we won't but they also tried to make it a little bit of a challenge. I'm not sure exactly what goes into how they set the numbers. But we did with From Chaos to Creativity, I believe the original number was 4,000 and we more than doubled that. So I think they were like, ‘Well, if we more than doubled it, let's almost more than double the next book, because she's already got an audience, there's already a little bit of buzz around it.' They make sure that they're covering their production costs and all of that sort of thing. But they are trying to make it a bit of a challenge and not just, ‘Oh, it's $400. Let's see if we can fund that.' Joanna: Exactly. And in just looking at it, what's interesting is they've used the page for your book to also include links to loads of other books that they've got on different things. That's how I feel about Kickstarter. It's almost like this ecosystem, that if you start building an audience there, and then you put out multiple projects, then it does compound over time. You've got the benefit with this latest one, you've got the benefit of all the ones that have come before in terms of picking up people every time. I always think that when we think about Kickstarter, which I am, that it can't just be a one-off, that you almost have to have a plan to do others in the future. Jessie: Yes, and the idea of working with other people on this, whether that's getting people to donate maybe an eBook that you can use as part of the Kickstarter reward. Or in one case, a friend of mine did a Kickstarter recently, where each week, he had a different subscriber bonus. If you signed up in the first week, then you got all four of these extra eBooks that friends of his had donated. And if you signed up in week two, you got the three of them and so one of them went away every week. So it increased this, like, ‘Oh, I got to get in early. So I can get all of these little rewards.' Joanna: That is a good tip. We're almost out of time. I want to come back to the book because the subtitle is ‘Create a Writing Practice That Brings You Joy.' I feel like the word joy can be difficult for some people to associate with writing because it can feel like it's difficult, or it's a struggle, or it has to be really important. So having joy might be difficult. What are your final tips around finding joy in writing? Jessie: I think it goes back to letting go of what you think you should be doing, how you think you should be writing, and what the outcome of your writing is going to be. I think most of us got into writing because we liked telling stories, or we wrote stories as kids. I certainly did when I was a kid and I was writing stories. It wasn't so I could make a bestseller list or pay my mortgage. I find the times when I'm so frustrated with writing are when I'm looking at a book and being like, ‘Okay, is this going to sell? Is this going to pay the mortgage?' If you can let that outcome go and just focus on, ‘What do we love about this? Oh, I love dialogue. I love when the characters come alive and that sparkles, how can I get more of that?' In the end, you can't control outcomes, you can certainly do your best to market your book and sell your book. But the only thing you can control is your daily process and that's where you're going to be spending your most time. I really, really encourage you to think, how are you spending your days writing? Do you want to still be that happy or that miserable five years from now as you're still working on your writing career because it takes a while? Joanna: It absolutely does. Brilliant. Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jessie: You can find everything at jessiekwak.com. So everything's there. I'm on Instagram and Twitter. And basically, if you Google me I'm the only Jessie Kwak you'll find in like 10 pages of Google results. So I'm easily findable. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Jessie. That was great. Jessie: Awesome. Thank you so much, Joanna.The post From Big Idea To Book With Jessie Kwak first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you write a book that children will love? How can you reach schools and libraries with your books? What might you be leaving on the table in terms of revenue in your author business? Daniel Miller shares his tips, and we also discuss the potential opportunities in his business model. In the intro, I talk about London Book Fair 2022, petition against Amazon's ebook return policy [Change.org], Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives, and Other Introverts. Plus, want to win 14 crime/thriller/mystery novels? Enter the Easter giveaway (8-18 April 2022) Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Daniel Jude Miller is the author and illustrator of seven children's books. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes From illustration to writingTips for authors who want to work with an illustratorWhy publishing independently is worth the ‘necessary evil' of the business side in order to retain creative controlPrint runs vs print-on-demand for illustrated books — and are you leaving money on the table?Selling children’s books direct through classroom visits, and on an author website You can find Daniel Miller at djudemiller.com and on Twitter @djudemiller Transcript of Interview with Daniel Miller Joanna: Daniel Jude Miller is the author and illustrator of seven children's books. Welcome to the show, Daniel. Daniel: Hello, and thank you for having me. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. Tell us a little bit more about you, and how you got into writing books for children. Daniel: Well, that's an interesting story because I did not want to write books for children. In fact, I didn't want to write books for anyone. I actually started out as an illustrator. I was the kid that was drawing in school, I was the one who went to a special art high school, I went to art college, and I only wanted to be an illustrator. I had no plans on writing. I never actually even tried. Growing up, when I was in school, it wasn't really a thing that they focused on, so I never even attempted it. When I was about 25, I got an idea for a story, and I had a problem because I had two choices, either I was going to let somebody else write it and just do the illustrations for my own idea, or I'd have to actually learn how to write. So, I only decided to write and only started writing when I was 25 years old, and I had already spent almost 20 years being an artist. Joanna: Wait. Sorry. That doesn't make sense. You were 25 when you decided to be a… Daniel: To start writing. Yeah. That was literally the first time I ever sat down to write, but I had been drawing since I was literally five years old. Joanna: Oh, okay. I thought you meant you had a 20-year career in illustration. Daniel: No. I was the person who was obsessed with art, and that was my only goal. Kids asked me all the time, if I wasn't an artist, what would I be? I have no idea, because I don't know how to fix a car, I don't know how to swing a hammer, I can't cook to save my life. I had one goal and one goal only, and that was to be an artist, and it worked. The writing part was not part of the plan. That came accidentally. And surprisingly, it's actually now the part I slightly enjoy more. Joanna: That's interesting. So, you had this first idea for a story, and clearly, you decided to learn to write, but how did you go about that? How did you go about developing a new craft? Did you do degree courses, or did you just write, or how did you do it? Daniel: I wish I would've taken some courses. That probably would've been a better idea. I decided to just do it, and it took almost 15 years to finish the first actual book, because I also decided, maybe foolishly, but it was more like a challenge, to write my first book in rhyme. It was a very long book. It wasn't like cat and hat-type rhymes. It was going to be very complicated. That's probably not the best thing to train yourself on, but ultimately, it worked. It just took a really, really long time. From that moment when I had the idea for my first book to when that book was actually physically in my hands, was 15 years. And that was a lot of reading other books. That was a lot of just going over it. There must have been easily 100 drafts, because normally, there's a lot of drafts, but when you're learning how to write, there's even more. And so, it was just a long, long process. Joanna: What were you doing as a job while you were doing all that? Daniel: I was an illustrator. I had a day job that I really didn't like, because it was a job at an advertising agency, and that was not the type of art that I wanted to do, because it was a whole lot of insurance, and medicine, and I was drawing, but not drawing anything that I had any interest in at all. It kind of worked out perfect because when I got the idea to do a story, even though it took 15 years to do it, the first one… They don't take that long now. Now it's about a year to do both parts, the writing, and the drawings. But it worked out perfect because I didn't want that job anymore anyway. My illustration career had become really, really stagnant, and I wasn't even really honestly enjoying drawing at all anymore. So, it kind of worked perfect. Right when I was writing, that invigorated my art career. And it turns out, this wasn't the plan originally. I had planned on being a magazine illustrator, but it turned out that I really liked doing books. Forget about the writing part. I never planned on doing that. I never planned on being a book illustrator. The plan was to be a magazine editorial illustrator. It took me 15 years to find out that that job was really boring. But, eventually, I did. It took learning a new craft to save my art career at the same time. Joanna: I love that, because I feel like, so often, I know a lot of freelance writers who will say, ‘I spend all my day writing, but it's writing stuff that I don't particularly want to write.' And so, many authors listening are still in jobs like that. I'm glad you re-found your love of art. That's just fantastic. So, you're now a full-time children's author and illustrator? Daniel: Yes. I like to put it like this. It's more like being a part-time writer, part-time illustrator, part-time publisher, part-time website designer, part-time… And when you put those all together, it's one full-time job that takes up the entire day. Joanna: But that is the truth of being an independent creative, I think. When I say I'm a full-time writer, what I mean is the same as you. Plus, I do podcasting, which could be marketing, could be income, is those things. The job of a writer/illustrator is never just that, is it? There's all the running-your-own-business stuff. Daniel: There are so many parts. It's funny because actually, if I really had to add up the actual hours, probably the creative part is only about 40%, the writing and illustrating, of the actual day. 60% is the running the business. Unfortunately, that's not the part I enjoy almost at all, but it's necessary because of the path that I chose, but I wish I could dedicate more time to the creative side. But unfortunately, that's not really how it works when you're on your own. Joanna: I'm going to return to that, with your publishing choices, but let's just come back to the craft side. That first book, you said that you had a complicated rhyme structure, which meant it took a very long time. What are your tips now for people who might be writing books for children? What are your tips for writing books they love, but also that don't take 15 years? Daniel: Right. You don't want to take 15 years. At least get it a little bit less than that. But the main thing, for me, is I don't think about the kids when I'm writing at all. I don't think, ‘What will they like?' I think that's a trap that children's authors fall into is that they look around and they say, ‘What do kids like?' And then they try to write to their interests, as opposed to just writing something that you find interesting, something that if you're excited about something, just write that. I've found that I don't really think, ‘Will kids like this?' Because, first of all, a lot of times, you're wrong. One of my books I had written, I didn't think this book, ‘Halloween Boy and the Christmas Kid,' that's based on my son… I wrote it for me. I actually didn't think it would sell very well, but I just needed to make it because it was about him, and I created it, and it turned out that it's actually the bestselling book I have. So, the thing is, I don't think too much, like, ‘What are kids interested in right now?' Or, ‘What do I think they want to see?' Because I think that really limits you in what you can write about, but also, a lot of times, you're wrong. So, you're better off just writing a good book, right? No matter who you're writing for, kids or adults, write the book you want to read, write the thing that you think is funny, write something that you find interesting, and the audience will find your book. I just think it's dangerous when you start trying to cater your work to the audience. That's just a big mistake. Joanna: And then, obviously, most children's authors are not illustrators as well. So, as an illustrator yourself, if an author wants to work with an illustrator, what's the best way that they can communicate their vision with an illustrator? Because obviously, what you do is you write some words and you draw some stuff and then, presumably, there's an iterative process. But when an author is commissioning an illustrator, it's a bit different, isn't it? If an author wants to work with an illustrator, what's the best way that they can communicate their vision with an illustrator? Daniel: I've only done two books for someone else, but the hardest part always was with working with an author, and I know this as an author myself now, is that always the writing gets completed first. What happens is the author tends to, obviously, fall in love with their own work. When you hire an illustrator, you have to remember that it's a partnership. And the problems that I've had in the past is that authors will approach me, and they're so in love with what they've done that they don't necessarily want to let the illustrator do their job, and let them be creative, and take your words and embellish on them and make it better and bring this all together. They have a tendency, sometimes, to have a very heavy hand, and sort of direct the illustrator and say, ‘This is what I want. This is how you should do it.' When in reality, a lot of times, they're not right, because they're not illustrators. So they don't understand how that process works. I think the key is, if you write but you're going to let someone else illustrate it, remember, it's sort of like a marriage. This book is not going to anymore be your book, it's going to be the two of your book. If you can remember that, that it's a back and forth process, that these are your words and their drawings, and you go back and forth, and when the product comes out, it's a joint product. I think when authors go in and they say, ‘This is my book,' that's where it becomes a problem, because they're not allowing the illustrator the freedom and the creativity because they're basically art directing, which is not really what you want to do. Joanna: How does your process work? Do you have a picture of an image in your mind first, or words in your mind, and is it an iterative creative process? Daniel: Always, the writing comes first. And I explain that the reason I do that is because it's way easier to change words than it is to change drawings. If you start writing your story, and the character, for example, has a mustache, and you write that, that they have a mustache, but then you start doing the drawings, and then later in the story, you go, ‘You know what? I don't want him to have a mustache,' that's really easy to fix in the writing process. That's much harder to fix in the drawing. It's important that all of the words are done before you start almost doing any of the finished art, because it's just too hard to change. Usually, I'll write everything first, but I have a weird process because a lot of times, I'll start writing, and then you get writer's block, and then I'll go and start writing something else, and then I'll come back to the first one and then I'll do a third one. Generally, at any given time, I'm usually working on three writing projects at the same time and two illustration projects, because those drawings are for books that are already finished, but are waiting for the drawings. So, it's sort of like juggling, for me. There's a lot going on because you get stuck, whether you're drawing or writing. And for me, I'm lucky because I have more than one job. When you get stuck, you just go and you do something else. Gradually, I have some stuff that's 90% done, some stuff that's 75% done, some stuff that's 10% done. Gradually, they'll all be finished, but they're all being worked on at the time. Joanna: It's so fascinating. I feel like it's an amazing art that you have, and a) it works very well as a children's author, in particular, to do both of those things at the same time. But let's get into the business side, because you mentioned a few minutes ago that you don't like running the business. Daniel: No. Joanna: But it is a necessary evil for the publishing path you chose. So, you've chosen an independent route. Why did you choose the independent route if you're not into the business side? Daniel: That's a good question. I've been asking myself that a lot. I actually never did the formal attempt at getting a publisher. I sent my first book out, I believe, only to one place. It got rejected, and I just decided that it wasn't for me. I don't love the business side, the paperwork, the accounting, and all that, but it's a necessary evil to have the control. I think once I realized I was going to be doing the art, the writing, but also the graphic design, I wanted to make most of the decisions. It's funny because there's simple ones like dust jackets. All my picture books have dust jackets. I've never done a softcover book before, and all the hardcovers have dust jackets. I would probably run into some issues with a publisher that some of them would say, ‘Let's do it this way or that way,' and I wanted full control to make all creative decisions. In order to have that control, unfortunately, I was going to have to do the paperwork and the accounting because I was going to have to run the business. So, it was basically just for that reason. I always felt that there were going to be so many changes, and to all the aspects, to the writing, to the illustration, because I had worked in illustration for a long time. And even though you think you have a good drawing, a lot of times the client thinks otherwise, and they make bad decisions sometimes. And they'll tell you to change things that you know are not in the benefit of the art, but that's your job. I didn't want my books to become like that, where there was someone else kind of directing it and telling me, ‘Let's change this character, let's do this.' I wanted just full and total control, and unfortunately, that control comes along with a lot more responsibility. Joanna: I love that you say that. This is the number one reason that people choose the independent route, which is creative freedom, creative control. No one ever says, ‘Oh, it's because I want to make more money,' or something like that. It's always, ‘I want creative control.' I can see that that's even more important when you're an illustrator as well, because the vision in your head is both words and pictures. And so, of course, if you're working with someone else, they're going to change it. But if you're doing it all yourself, then you can do that. It is, as you say, both the blessing and the curse of an independent, right? Daniel: Right. And that doesn't mean that I'm not open to critique. Obviously, every book I've done, it goes through a large process with my own family, but then I have a group of students that will look through it. And their input is valuable. There are times that I have made changes based on things they've said. I think, ultimately, though, I want to make the final decision, because there's some times where people have suggested things I don't agree with, I get to decide that we're not going to do that. If there was a publisher involved, they may say, ‘No, that's what we're doing.' Surprisingly, though, something you said about no one ever decides, ‘I'm going to do this to make more money,' technically, I think there is more money in doing it this way. There's a lot of risk and there's a lot of investment, but I think, ultimately, I actually probably make more money doing it this way than I think I would have if I would've done it the other way. Although there was a big lead-up, and it took time to get to that point, I think, ultimately, it'll actually be more profitable too. Joanna: Yes. We always talk about this being a long-term business. I was talking with a friend earlier, and I was like, ‘Look, this doesn't necessarily look viable with one book, but it looks viable over five years, over a decade, over the next 20 years, because you have that control of your intellectual property, and you can do what you like with it.' You can't assess the business prospect or the business comparison if you only just do the next two years, basically. You almost have to think much longer term. I've been on your website. We'll talk about in a minute, but you've got so much intellectual property now, and these just wonderful, wonderful characters that you own. It seems like you'll make even more money in the future because of the [intellectual property licensing] possibilities. Daniel: That's very important, what you just said about, if I had any advice for other children's authors, and a lot of people ask me this. It's tough with one book. It is. It's just really, really hard to turn that into a business. If you have only one idea for a story, then it's probably best you go the traditional publishing route. I was lucky because even when I had that boring job that I didn't like, behind the scenes, I was working on a lot of different personal projects. The first book that got published for me, I already had 10 more that were in the process. So, I had a viable business. It didn't work until probably around the third book. Once I had three, then it became profitable. So, if there's someone out there, and you have one idea, that's great. Don't try to turn that into a business, because that's going to be really hard to leverage with just one thing. Then you're better off just letting someone else do all the paperwork and the accounting, and go that route. If you believe that you have seven, or eight, or a million books in you, then, yes, then I suggest doing it this way, because, like you're saying, you control all your own intellectual property, and there's probably a lot of it. Joanna: Although I would say that I think most people start off thinking that they only have one book, and then you get the bug or you don't get the bug. And if you get the bug, it goes on and on and on, like you and I. I have a lot of books now, and there's always more ideas for more, but I didn't know I had all those ideas at the beginning. So, I'd just add that. Let's talk about the actual publishing side of things. You mentioned there that you basically only do hardcovers, it sounds, with dust jackets. So, how do you publish your books? Tell us about who you use for printing and why you make those choices. Daniel: I've used multiple printers. When I decided that this is what I'm doing, I'm going to do it myself, I know print-on-demand is out there. For some people, that might work. It wasn't going to work for me because I made the decision right away that I wanted to do hardcover, and you really can't do print-on-demand hardcover. [From Joanna: Actually, you can do print-on-demand hardcovers with Ingram Spark and now KDP Print, but they don't have extra add-ons like foil, etc.] So I decided that I wanted my books to be indistinguishable from any other book you would pick up in Barnes & Noble. The quality had to be, on every level, not just the writing and the art, but on the graphic design and on the physical products. That meant they needed dust jackets, they needed to be hardcover, sometimes there's laminates and foils, and all sorts of things that any other real, legitimate publisher would do. At that point, it was the process of finding a printer. There were times in the beginning that the printers were in China. There are other times that I was using American printers. Now it's really confusing, because everything is kind of crazy. Right this minute, I'm actually looking for a new one, because getting things is not the easiest thing to do nowadays. But I've always tried to get the best quality possible. Now, that comes at a cost. That's the big difference between going the print-on-demand route and going the route that I took. There was a very, very sizable, legitimate business investment that needed to be made, by my credit cards, in the beginning of this process. And like you were saying about how you think you have one idea and then you get two ideas and three, well, you think something's going to cost a certain amount, and it always costs more, and more, and more. I found out really quickly, within two years of starting a business, that this business had sizeable debt, but it also had sizeable inventory. [From Joanna: Personally, I mostly choose print on demand as there is no debt, and no inventory to manage. You don't need to do Daniel's business model to successfully self-publish!] Luckily, I have a big enough basement to store all this stuff near me, but I have almost 10,000 literal units in the basement, sorted and ready to go, but that took a lot of money to get it off the ground. And then I needed a way to sell that, because if you have a lot of inventory but no sales, that's a big problem. Joanna: And just to say, though, you can do hardcover print-on-demand with dust jackets through IngramSpark. Obviously, the quality is not going to match your print run, but why not also have those available? Daniel: You know what? Honestly, I actually didn't even know that it existed. I just picked my path, and I've sort of shot through this path. And I know, also, though, the problem with the print on demand, like I had spoken about before, that this route is more profitable at times. I know when print-on-demand books are printed, obviously, they're sort of expensive to get them produced. So the profit per unit is smaller. For me, the profit per book, depending on where I'm selling it, it can actually be $12 or even sometimes $13 per book. There's a sizable investment to get 5,000 units in my house. But, in the long run, the individual sales are much more profitable as they're selling. You just gotta hope you have a way to sell them. Joanna: Although I'm still going to challenge you on this and say, why not just have a print-on-demand version up on Amazon or on IngramSpark, which goes out to bookstores all around the world that you might not be reaching in other ways, and then just put a $2 or a $3 profit on it, because you don't have to pay anything? To me, print on demand is this magic solution where I don't have to pay anything, and I get money every month, which is awesome. I totally love your model, and we're going to talk more about it, but I don't see that they have to be separate. I see that you can do both, and therefore, not leave money on the table, because we like more money, right? Daniel: You make a good point. I don't sell internationally at all. Zero, at this point. So, you're right. For something like that, you're right. That is something I definitely should focus on. Actually, international shipping for books is really complicated. I just had an order in Canada. It became a giant problem. And it's Canada, and I'm in America. This shouldn't be that hard, but it became a giant issue. So, you're right. And there are benefits to it. I never even thought of that. So, I will look into that now. Thank you, because that is an area that, like I said, that's the business part, the part I don't love doing. So, thank you. You've helped me. Joanna: Oh, no worries. Well, then I'll help you some more. And people listening, IngramSpark does have a setup cost per book, but you can get a code that will make it free if either you're a member or you join the Alliance of Independent Authors, or in the 20BooksTo50K Facebook group, they also have codes. Other places have codes, but certainly, with the number of books you have, it's worth joining an organization like the Alliance of Independent Authors, and as part of that, you'll get the code for Ingram. And because you can do your own designs, it just makes sense. I've sold books in 169 countries (using print on demand). So, I would say, definitely, that it's a good idea. And this is such a good realization, and I'm always looking for this too, which is, what am I not doing? In fact, just before we got on the phone, I've been going through my entire print back catalog of print-on-demand and putting up my prices, just by a dollar, or $2, or whatever, because of inflation, because of the price of paper, because I want a better margin, and I'm like, ‘Right. I'm just going to put everything up.' It's because someone said something somewhere and I was like, ‘Right. I really need to look at this.' And I'm certainly always interested in that too. The big question is what are we leaving on the table in terms of revenue? Daniel: Yes. Excellent. Because, like you said, you have 169 countries you sold in. I've sold in one and a half, America and barely into Canada. So, yes, I appreciate that. I've written that down, and I will look into that. Thank you. Joanna: No worries. Right. So, that's the publishing side. Let's talk about your direct sales, because I think this is fascinating too. And you've chosen this particular route. Like you said, you've got 10,000 units in your basement. Tell us about how you sell those. Daniel: I went into this business just loving the creative side of it. And like I said, I didn't really think very much at all about the business part because I was so excited to make books. I was one of those of people that figured, ‘I got a plan.' And the plan was basically one line, that I would make a book, and I would put it up on Amazon, and then you step two is get rich. That doesn't work like that at all. What had happened was I had already invested an enormous amount of money, and I had literally no plan on how I was going to do this. I went to a book show, a small book show, and there was an author there that was self-published, doing it the way that I was planning on doing it, and he had sold 150,000 copies on his own. And he's a great guy. I went there and I met him and he said to me, ‘I love your books. You're going to be real successful. Are you going to do author visits?' I had no idea what he was talking about. And he said, ‘That's what you have to do. ‘When you sell children's books, you have to go out and meet the kids and talk to the kids, and schools have kids.' So, he said, ‘Come with me. I have an author visit next week. I'll show you how it's done.' I went, and he had this whole presentation, a room full of second-graders, 200 kids, and I'm sitting there going, ‘There's no way I can do this. This was not the plan.' The plan was to make books. It wasn't to give presentations. And right at that moment, when I'm thinking, ‘I can't do this,' he says, ‘I have a friend with me.' And I'm thinking, ‘Please be talking about someone else.' But he was not. He brought me up on stage. I'll never forget it. My hand was shaking when he handed me the microphone, literally a room full of second-graders, but I'm the most scared person in the room. I answered two questions, and then I got in the car and I drove home and I said to my wife, ‘There's no way that I can do this route. There is no way. We gotta find a better plan.' And she said, ‘Well, you better do this, because we have 10,000 books in the basement.' Joanna: In your basement! Daniel: Yes. So, I, literally, on that drive home, it was about a two-hour drive home, and I was like, ‘I guess this is what I'm doing.' I lucked out because it was the end of the school year, so I had the summer to figure out what I was going to do. It turns out, when September came and I did my first author visit, I wasn't nervous for a second. It's never bothered me, because it just seemed like the right fit for me, because it allows me to talk about the writing process, it allows me to talk about my journey, it allows me to talk about illustration, and that's how I sell, easily, 90% of all the copies go directly to the kids, which I actually kinda like because they get to meet me, talk to me, and get excited about what I'm doing, and that makes them want to buy it, and that makes me want to sell it to them. Joanna: Let's talk about these author visits then. What was your process there? Did you do some speaking training, or what did you do? How did you change from being terrified to being fine about author visits? Daniel: No. Nothing. The first one I was supposed to do was a really small school, and I thought, ‘Great.' I basically practiced in the basement. I actually thought I was going to write a script. I thought I was going to memorize it more like an actor. And on the first one I was supposed to do, which was going to be really, really small, I figured, ‘Perfect.' But then it snowed, and it got canceled. It got moved up. So, my actual first one, my first ever presentation, was to a room of about 300 people. And I don't know what it was. It just clicked. As soon as they handed me the microphone and it was my story that I was going to get to tell, I just fell in love with it instantly, and on any given week, both virtually and in-person, I have to do probably around 20 separate presentations, 45 minutes each time. It's never made me nervous. I know that's not normal. I know most people, you're right, especially authors, I hear all the time, that they're not a fan of getting in front of a room full of people. But for me, I guess there was a showman side of it that I liked, and it just never bothered me. Joanna: Interesting. Okay. You said 20 a week. That's amazing. How do you get those author visits? How do schools find out about you? Daniel: There's a few ways. Obviously, word of mouth is very helpful. But there's a certain amount of advertising that I'll do. There's a certain amount of websites. There's one called authorbookings.com that is relatively cheap, and you could put up all your information up there, and that's where librarians and teachers go to find speakers. I do a lot of just direct mail, of getting lists of librarians, and teachers, and just reaching out. I find this all the time, usually it goes through the librarians. But the librarians will tell me that they have a hard time finding authors. They want them, but they have a hard time finding them because the authors aren't out there. They're not putting it on their website that they do what I do. So, if anyone's interested in doing it, the best thing you can do is reach out. I started with just literally my local school. And the other benefit of doing author visits is not only do you sell the books, but you get paid to come. So, even if you sell nothing, which doesn't happen, but even if you did, you got paid for being there. In the beginning, I would just reach out to all schools that were near me, and in the beginning, you offer it for free or for very little money, and they're usually excited about it. I know here in America, most schools do an author visit almost every year. But sometimes they struggle to find someone. So, if you're out there and emailing them or calling them and saying, ‘This is what I do,' you'd be surprised that a lot of them will take you up on it. And then usually, if you can do a good job, then the word of mouth will carry it sort of from there. Joanna: Wow. This is great. You just gave me an idea there, which is, at the moment, I advertise myself speaking as Joanna Penn for nonfiction, and mainly speak at conferences for authors. But you're right, as a fiction author, I have never even considered the speaking angle. Now, obviously, I don't do it for children, but why don't I even have a speaking tab on my fiction site, my J. F. Penn site? As you say, a lot of the times, people don't really know that you're available for that kind of thing unless you say you are. I saw on your website, you've got a booking on your store. People can actually go to your store and book a session with you. Daniel: Correct. You could do it multiple ways. And then it got even more interesting in the last couple of years because I shied away from doing virtual things, because I felt like kids spent too much time on a computer already, so it's better for them to meet me in person. But then it became necessary for the last couple of years for me to do my job from the house. Now, I can go in person and explain how I make books and show them how they can do it, I could do it on the computer, people can call me, people can email me, people can book it straight through the website. If you let people know, then, a lot of times, they'll pick you up on it and they'll say, ‘Come and talk to me, or the people that I'm in charge of.' Joanna: That's brilliant. When you say you sell the books at the event, so say the librarian says, ‘Can you come to our school?' Do you then say, ‘I'll come and I'll bring 50, 100 books,' or whatever? Do you get the sale in advance for the books, or do you then expect the kids to be buying things when you're there? Daniel: I do it the opposite way of literally every other author that I know that does it. They do it the way you are describing. A lot of times, they pre-sell the books, and then they'll bring them, and then have them that day. I've always felt, for two reasons, that I want to sell them after the event. The first reason is just out of respect for the parents and the teachers, and the students, that I want them to meet me first. I don't want to sell them something, because most times, the kids don't know who I am. I don't have big enough name recognition that they know the books. So, I want them to meet me first, and then sell to them. The other reason is because usually, if I sell after, I sell more, because they've met me and because I've shown them how I make a book, and told them where the idea came from. That actually makes them want it more. I'm usually there for the entire day, and doing different groups, because each of my presentations is different. It's different talking to a kindergartner than it is talking to a sixth-grader. So, each one has different information, different books I talk about. I bring posters, which is a great promotional tool, and also something fun for the kids. Even if they don't buy books, I want to make sure they leave the event with something that they can remember me by, and just something that they can enjoy. So I bring posters, and then I bring the order forms with me on that day. They go home after I've finished all of my sessions. And then usually what they'll do is they'll collect them all, and then they'll just send me all the orders and all the payments, and then I'll just ship the books out. I've done it both ways. I just found that when I pre-sold the books, I sold significantly less than when I would sell them after I had a chance to talk with the kids. Joanna:: That's interesting. And especially if it's virtual, then it's getting used to that anyway because you're not showing them a physical book there in the room. I can see that that will work. I also want to ask about your website, DJudeMiller.com. Your website looks fantastic. Everyone should go over and have a look at your website. It's brilliant. But, of course, you're an illustrator too, so, there's lots of wonderful images on it, and your characters look great. I clicked on a few things. It looks like you use Square for direct sales. Is that right? How does your cart work and your online sales work for print books? Daniel: First, on the website, yeah. I had to do that all myself. That was another job that I had to learn, because I wasn't a web designer by any means, and there's another skill. I'm lucky because I am the illustrator, so things go faster, because I can just do it myself, and they're way cheaper, because I don't have to pay someone to do it. But it is an enormous amount of work. And then, because I was doing kids' books, it was important for the website to be extensive. It can't be a three-page or four-page website. I think my website now has over 90 pages, believe it or not, of things that they can read, and games that they can play, and videos, and all that stuff. For the sales, yes, it is going through Square. I have never had a problem with Square. It is the easiest thing in the world to use, because also, I do a lot of book fairs, and book shows, and these type of things, where I have to take payments there too. So I have the device that real easy, attaches to your phone. You can swipe credit cards, you can put payments in. Really, really easy. Never had a problem. Money shows up in, I think, a day. Really, really easy to do. And I'm doing the shipping. So they're handling all my payments and everything like that, but then it's my job to pack all this stuff up and then ship it out. Joanna: Is it a plugin? A lot of people use WooCommerce plugin for WordPress, or Shopify. I've never actually known anyone who uses Square. Did you have to just build that into your website? Daniel: It's actually on their website. It looks like it's on my website, but when you click on, to buy a book, you're actually technically leaving my website and going to a page on their website where all of the books are there and whatnot. So, when you actually input your credit card and everything, technically, you're not even on my website anymore. You're actually on theirs. Joanna: That is good. Do they deal with all the sales taxes, or do you have to deal with that? Daniel: Nope. They handle all of that stuff, and there's a million settings that you can use. You can set up different sales taxes for different state. They handle all the things. You can do a lot of cool stuff, too. You can put in coupon codes, all that stuff, because I use that a lot for when I go to schools and stuff. Actually, I don't even use their service to the extent of what it can do. Because the truth is, probably, I don't know, only 10% of all of my sales are actually coming through the website. Like I said, 90% are going through me physically being there, and then me actively selling it. So, that's one area. Since I have so many jobs, the problem is I don't have an enormous amount of time to focus on building my online marketing. That's one area where I'm sorely lacking, and that's something that is planned for the summer, when the schools are gone for the time being, then, to try to elevate my online sales. The truth is I haven't really needed it because I do well enough just selling directly to the kids. But as a business, like you said, leaving money on the table. I would rather draw than do marketing, a million times over. So, I have to kind of convince myself to focus more on my online sales. Joanna: Oh, I think everyone listening feels the same way. No one loves marketing. No creative is like, ‘Oh, I really want to do my marketing today.' As you say, it's one of the things we have to do. I had COVID last year, quite badly, and I couldn't work. My brain wasn't working, I was sick, and my income was fine because most of my business is online and scalable, and doesn't rely on physical me. I think even if you love it like you do, for people listening as well, it's about thinking, how much of this business is reliant on physical me? I thought about that a lot during COVID. If I get really sick or if I die, how much money will come in for my family, and stuff like that? Daniel: I was just talking to my wife about this yesterday, and your plan is what I have to kind of start gravitating towards, because we were just saying my business is almost entirely reliant on me because it's become more like a show. Or at least that's what it is for now, is that I'm very reliant on physically being in the room. It works well to move a lot of books by talking about the books, and pitching the books, and selling the books. The problem is there isn't a lot of passive sales. There just isn't, because I haven't spent the time to set up that infrastructure. So, yes, that is something I definitely have to focus on. Joanna: Well, I've really enjoyed talking to you. I was looking on your website, and everything looks incredibly slick and successful and brilliant, but we've identified, hopefully, a few ways that you can make more money, for hopefully, less effort in the future. I think that's really great. I think that we can all learn things from each other. And like I said, I've learned from you too. We're all trying to figure out and it never stops. We never stop learning new things. Daniel: I did not expect that talking to you, I was going to learn things, and I did. And that's great, because you're right. A lot of the ways you're doing things is helpful to me. There are areas, yes, that, like you're saying, you used a very, a good word. The word ‘slick' is, yes, my website comes off as very slick. There are still holes in the business plan. There's still many. And so, for everyone out there listening, there are some things I do very, very well, and there are some advantages I have because I have a lot of different skills, but there are some things that I'm sorely lacking, and still learning, and even growing today. So, yes, this has been helpful for me as well. Joanna: Fantastic. If people are interested in checking your books out, just give us an idea of what age group your books are for, and also, where people can find you and your books online. Daniel: This is another thing, going back to having a publisher, since I'm independent, I can make all books. Usually, when you have a publisher, they put you in a category and say, ‘Let's stick with this age range.' My picture books, some of them are for kindergarten, all the way up till about the fourth or fifth grade. And then I actually have a middle-grade novel that's going to be released in the middle of the summer. That book will actually be for around the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade and above. I'm actually, creatively, I'm very good at broadening my horizons. And I'm hoping, from a business sense, I have to get better at that, but technically, there's something there for a kindergartener all the way up to eighth grade, and you can find it at my website, is the letter D, and then my middle name, Jude, J-U-D-E, miller.com. Djudemiller.com. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time, Daniel. That was great. Daniel: Fantastic. This has been a lot of fun.The post Creating And Selling Books For Children With Daniel Miller first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you create distance from your manuscript in order to see it as a reader does and edit effectively? What are some of the biggest issues with editing a manuscript? How can you edit on a budget? Tiffany Yates Martin talks all about editing in this interview. In the intro, 10 years of the Alliance of Independent Authors [ALLi]; Re-calibrating [Seth Godin]; NFTs for Authors, episode 610. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just typos and grammar checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing, and integration with Scrivener MS Word, Chrome and more, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Tiffany Yates Martin is an editor, speaker, and teacher with almost 30 years in the publishing industry. She writes contemporary women's fiction as Phoebe Fox, and her latest non-fiction book is Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes The three ‘brains’ we need: writer, reader, editorTips for creating distance from your manuscript so that you can see it the way a reader doesThe importance of writing characters that readers care about — and making their stakes clearMomentum vs. paceFinding your author voiceEditing support on a budget You can find Tiffany Yates Martin at FoxPrintEditorial.com and on Twitter @FoxPrintEd Transcript of Interview with Tiffany Yates Martin Joanna: Tiffany Yates Martin is an editor, speaker, and teacher with almost 30 years in the publishing industry. She writes contemporary women's fiction as Phoebe Fox, and her latest non-fiction book is Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. Welcome, Tiffany. Tiffany: Thank you, Joanna. Thanks for inviting me onto the show. Joanna: Ah, it's good to talk about this topic. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and editing. Tiffany: The writing I'd always done. Like most of us, I started from the time I was very young. My mom recently gave me back a copy of a book I must have written in elementary school, called, embarrassingly enough, My Autobiography About Me: I Wrote It Myself. Joanna: Brilliant. Tiffany: It's full of gems, like ‘my brother is annoying,' that kind of thing. But it was funny because I bound it and I put my author note in there at the back, and I had back cover copy, so I think that was ingrained. I actually went into acting as a career, which is how I side hustled into editing. I was working as an actor, and thus working as a waiter in New York, like many of us, and one day I saw in ‘The New York Times' something that said, ‘Get paid for reading books. Send us $25 and we'll tell you how.' I wanted to find something with a little more longevity than waiting tables, that would allow me flexibility for my acting career. I had been an English major, and always good at it, always loved it, so I thought, well, give this a try, it's probably a scam. It wasn't actually a scam. It was full of really great suggestions for how to approach copy editing and proofreading, which is how I started, how to approach the managing editors and the copy chiefs at big publishing houses. Probably that was in the early '90s, and for probably the first 15 years of my career, I was working as a freelance copy editor for most of the big six, back when I started. And then about 12 years ago, I decided to move into developmental editing, and I've been doing that ever since. I work with authors directly, both indie and traditionally published, and I also work with several publishers. Joanna: You also write contemporary women's fiction, which I always find interesting, because obviously we all self-edit as writers, but the editor's brain, it can be so different. When did you think, ‘Oh, I know. I'll write fiction too,' and how do you manage those two different brains? Tiffany: Interestingly, I didn't try to set out to become an editor, but I realized, right around the time I think I shifted into developmental editing, it's my first love. I do love writing, and I always have, but I think I'm an editor first. As you correctly point out, the hardest thing about being a writer, if you're also an editor, is that your brain is working as editorial mindset, and that can shut you down. I think it's what we do sometimes as writers. I always advocate try to draft the story as freely as you can, because if you are sitting there editing it or observing it as you're going, you're getting in your own way and you're shutting yourself down. You're shutting off the very part of yourself that can achieve what you're trying to achieve. It's the equivalent of having somebody over your shoulder judging every line. ‘Did you really mean to say that? Is that the best way to do it? Oh, come on. That sucks.' That's a horrific way to try to write. Fiction was always the thing I most wanted to write. I did work as a journalist for a while, but I loved fiction, but I had to learn to shut off the editor brain. It was interesting because that was part of what helped me develop a lot of the theories that I used in the book, Intuitive Editing. I talk about the three stages of writing, and the three brains you need to be in at different times. You have to be in writer brain when you're writing. And then you shift to reader brain when you're doing your first assessment of what you have on the page, to see how effectively it comes across, how it strikes you. And then you transition into editor brain, to be able to figure out why it may not be working as well as it could in certain areas, and how to address those things. But then once you figured that out, you go back into writer brain, and you bring in all of those skills you learned as a writer, to use as revision. One reason I think editing can be hard for us is because we're not really taught how to edit. We're taught how to write. Those skills are definitely what you will use in editing and revising. But we teach them almost as if drafting is the main process of creating a story, and it really is just, as I always say, the first base camp on Everett. Much of the bulk of what a writing career and writing craft is, is the revision part. You put your story on the page as well as you can, and you then get to deepen and develop it into the thing that you saw in your head that may not be coming across yet on the page. I love it. I know a lot of authors dread editing. Hate having to do it. They see it as the red pencil slashing into their work. I don't think that's what it is. To me, it's the process of doing more, and more deeply, of what you love about writing in the first place, which is creating these characters, creating worlds, putting them into these situations, and you find out what the soul of that story is. Then you develop it organically as you are working through your editing and revision. All editing is doing is identifying where what's on the page may not reflect as fully and deeply and effectively the way you envisioned it in your head. Joanna: I like editing a lot, actually. I find that first draft is the more difficult bit, and then I love my editing. I think people's processes differ so much. I love that you mention there, the reader brain. I haven't really heard it described like that before, but you're exactly right, because you do the writing brain thing and you write the thing, and then if you read it as a reader, you realize that you've used an acronym that you haven't explained, or you've just introduced this character and you haven't described them, or they're just talking in a empty room. In your head, you know what the setting is, but you haven't actually described that, or you've completely forgotten something, putting it into action, or doing something to communicate with someone else's mind. I feel that's so important, that we have to remember we're not telling the story to ourself. We're telling it to a reader who literally hasn't got a clue what we're talking about until they read the words that we put on the page. So, that's just going into the book a bit more. How do we get the separation? How do we create enough distance so we can move into that reader brain or into that editor brain? Tiffany: To get back to reader brain for a second, I love that you hit on that, because I think that's one reason we run into problems when we're editing our own work, is we skip that part. We don't teach how to edit or how to revise. What most writers do, in my experience, is finish the draft and then turn back to page one and start going through, and little by little, you're making little changes, whatever tweaks you think you might need to make. But what we skip over is that crucial piece that you just pointed out about seeing it as a reader, and seeing how the whole holds together. It's your first, really, only best chance to take in your work as close to the way a reader will see it as possible, because you're still fresh, because you've finished writing it, and you have not yet seen how this whole thing holds together. How can you start at the beginning if you haven't yet taken stock of exactly what you have on the page? The reason that it doesn't usually come across exactly as you intended is because of the other thing you pointed out, that filling in the blanks. It's not like, ‘Oh, we assume readers will know this.' I think we forget. We think we have put it on the page, and we don't have the objectivity to assess whether or not we have, and that's why I think of it as three different brains, because you really have to disconnect from it, to a degree, as the creator. How do you do that? The best way to do it is time. The longer you can step away from a story, the more you'll come back to it with an astonishing freshness that will reveal things to you that you probably would never have seen if you had immediately started going back through it. That's not always a luxury we have, especially if we're on deadline or put deadlines on ourselves that we're trying to meet. I have a bunch of little, I call them tricks. I hate that word, but some of them really are just silly little ways to trick your brain. I recently heard you talk about the fact that I think you have two different desks. Joanna: I go somewhere else. I went to the cafe this morning to edit. Tiffany: We train ourselves as writers to put your butt in the chair every day, or whatever your routine is, so that the muse knows where to find you. It's the same thing when you're approaching editing and revising. If you do it in the same place where you created it, sometimes it's really hard to get out of that mindset because it's habitual. So shake it up. Go to a different part of your house, go to a cafe, as you said. I used to be not a skeptic about this, but one of the things I always suggested to authors and never did myself was read it aloud, or have it read to you. I knew it worked for some people, but I was like, ‘Mmh, I don't really need to do that. That's not going to work for me.' And then I just finished recording the audiobook for Intuitive Editing, and oh my god, I was stunned by how much…you see it differently, you hear it differently. Not only the words themselves. I was catching echoed words and clumsy phrasings I could have made better, but that's just line editing stuff. I was seeing how the flow holds together and how the ideas come together. Is this in the right place? Is this the most effective way to state this? Luckily, because it's set in stone already and has been published for a couple of years, I was pleased to see it was, but it was really fascinating to see how that changed it, and not just the reading of it. Then, when I went to proof the files, the audio files, hearing it read opened up even more stuff to me. So that's a great way. This is one of the silly little tricks, but honest to god, it can work. Change the name on the cover sheet of your manuscript, not to your pen name, not to necessarily a real author's name. Just make up a name. It's the weirdest little distancing trick, as is changing the font that you usually write in. I know one author who swears by the much-maligned comic sans when they're doing their edits, because it makes it look different, in the same way that you might put it on your e-reader is another great way to do it, because suddenly it's formatted differently. And that sort of tricks your brain. Or printed out. Joanna: I print it out. I edit by hand. Tiffany: Does that give you a different perspective? Joanna: Yes, because when I write and I do the first self-edit, it's all on the computer, and then I print the whole thing out, and I print it double page, so I could almost fold it over and it would be like a book. Tiffany: Oh, cool. Joanna: I have to wear my glasses now because I can't really see the font properly, but I feel like by printing it out, it looks like a real book. And also I can just see more how it looks on the page, and that helps me with pacing and there's all kinds of things that printing it out does. I like that you say “trick.” You have to trick your brain, because we think we know better. We think we've done everything and then, like you say, you change the font and that will move words onto another line, which then helps you see words that you've repeated, or sounds that you've repeated, and you're like, how did I not see that? Tiffany: It forces you outside that creator perspective, and to see it in a new way, and it can be really helpful, as silly as it sounds. Joanna: Let's just talk about some of the common issues that you see, and I want to take it in two parts. First of all, with early-stage writers, which is people with their first to their third book within the same genre. If you jump genres, it's almost like starting again every time. What are some of the common issues you see with manuscripts from early-stage writers? Tiffany: Honestly, differentiating between what I see from early-stage writers and then more experienced writers is a little bit, to me, in my experience, artificial just because you'd be surprised how universal the things I see most commonly are. It usually has to do with what I call the “holy trinity of story,” which is character, stakes, and plot. It just may be that an author who is farther down the road of their career, we can dig maybe a little bit deeper, or I can shorthand as an editor. I can say something a little bit more like ‘Stakes here are not really clear. Could you put that on the page more,' whereas, with a newer reader, I might have to go into a bit more detail and explain why the stakes are important, what I mean by that, exactly how to show that on the page, that kind of thing. The things I see most often are with character. I always say that readers don't care what's happening until we care who it's happening to. If we do not have sufficient character development so that we have a reason to invest in the character… And we don't have to like them. They have to be real. We have to know enough about them and who they are to feel that we want to get in the car with them and take this journey that's going to be 80,000 words or more. Is this somebody we want to be with that long? And then, with stakes, if the character, who we now have come to care about, or at least invest in, if they do not care profoundly about something that they are pursuing, then we don't care. So if stakes are not clearly differentiated, clearly defined, and evident throughout the story, then it's hard for readers to feel invested. And then, with plot, I have little catchphrases for all of these. With plot, I always say action is not plot, and plot is not story. So, this is one area where I do see a difference with newer and more experienced writers. Newer writers sometimes will have a whole bunch of exciting stuff going on, but that's just action. What makes it plot is that it is in service to something that the character wants, their goal. What is at stake? What makes that story is how the character is changed by it as a result of their pursuit of this goal, the things that happened to them along the way, which is the plot, changes them, which is the character arc, from who they are at the beginning to who they are at the end. If those three things are not rock solid, then the story, it's like three legs of the tripod. It's just not going to stand as firmly as it could. But the other thing that I will often see is an unclear central story question, which is, what's the main reason that we as readers are reading this story? What is it we want to find out? Why do we keep turning the page? There will be one big umbrella question, generally, ‘Will Katniss survive the Hunger Games?' for example. But then there'll also be smaller questions. Will she keep her sister from having to go to the Hunger Games? Will she get a good weapon? Will she be adequately trained? Will she get Rue out of that tree? We need to have that propelling us all the way through the story, with, also, sustaining tension, which works in service to suspense. Suspense basically creates a question. Tension creates conflict, friction, something standing in the way of what the character wants. At some times, I think newer authors get into the habit of everything's fine, smooth sailing, the character's just going along, living her life. That's not story, that's real life. We don't read for that. We read for the peaks and the valleys, for opposition, for conflict, for things standing in the way. And we need to have that all the way through the story. If tension flags, think about pulling your reader through your story on a rope. If you let go of that rope and tension flags, what happens? Nobody's moving forward anymore. Joanna: And it's so interesting because you've talked about character, about stakes, about plots, suspense, tension. You have not even mentioned grammar and typos. Tiffany: Thank you for pointing that out. Joanna: This is what I think the difference is between early-stage writers and later-stage writers, or what I've at least seen in myself and other people, obviously, I'm not an editor, but is the early-stage writers, they literally jump into grammar and typos. Whereas once you've done a few books, you understand that, ‘Hey, you know, I can use ProWritingAid to fix those, but I cannot fix some of these much, much bigger things that a developmental editor, as you've talked about, will get into.' Where do grammar and typos sit in the editing process? Where's the importance of that? Tiffany: Grammar and typos, honestly, if we're just talking about that, that's copy editing stuff, and that's the very last gilding the lily. But a lot of authors, I think, do line editing first, and that's polishing the prose. That's making it pretty. I always say trimming the flab and adding the flavor. That's sexy and fun. Everybody wants to do that. But that's the thing about going back to the beginning and starting doing that. You're missing all the stuff that's more foundational to the story itself. I always say, if story is like building a house, that would be like hanging the curtains before you've got the drywall up or the windows installed. You've got to make sure that structure is solid before you start doing the sexy HGTV makeover part where you get to decorate it all. When I wrote the book, I actually laid it out the way that I approach an edit, that I often suggest authors approach an edit, which is to start with the macro edits. And that's the holy trinity that I just talked about, character, stakes, and plot, which is the foundation of your story. Once that's in place, then you can look at the micro edit stuff. That is suspense, intention, it's showing and telling, point of view, momentum, structure, the voice. Only after you've got all of that in place do you get to reward yourself with the sexy fun part of doing the line editing, which is tied in with voice, but it's also making your prose as specific and tight and elegant and polished as you can. But don't start with that, because it's counterproductive. You may cut a lot of it. You may want to revise a lot of those scenes you just painstakingly spent so much time making literarily perfect. Joanna: Absolutely. Back on the improving, you said there about getting some distance, that leaving it for an amount of time is a good way to get some distance. It's funny because I'm actually, right now, I'm editing my first three novels, which I wrote in 2009, 2010, and 2011. They started my career. They've got good reviews. But I'm now reading them more than a decade later. Tiffany: Wow. Joanna: In 2009, I wrote Stone of Fire and I've just finished revising it. I've just put out a new 2022 edition. And it's so crazy what I'm noticing from that difference. I'm like, ‘Okay, interesting.' The distance is so far that I've been scared of it for a long time, but I was able to get some perspective. One of the biggest things I noted that I wanted to, and I notice you have a chapter on this in the book, is pacing. Now, I write thrillers. And I noticed that my first, the book I published, the pacing was almost nonexistent. I think, because I read so much literary fiction back then, as I still do. But, I've read a lot more thrillers since. My paragraphs were pages long, and I didn't have any white space. I didn't have enough dialogue. Even just hitting the return key, sentence fragments, ways of communicating pace on the page. Obviously, not everyone writes thrillers. What are your thoughts on pacing? How do we communicate pace? Tiffany: Let me start, if I can, by differentiating between momentum and pace, which I think some authors confuse, and so they're approaching the wrong thing. Momentum, a lot of authors refer to that as pace, but really what momentum is, is how your story moves forward. And it should always be moving forward. Pace is the speed at which each scene progresses, and that can vary. And it should vary. I always say Niagara Falls and the Mississippi River both have momentum, but they move at a very different pace, so that's a good way to remember the difference between them. Pace is a great tool to use in service of creating the effect you want to create in the reader, as you said. So, one consideration is genre. If you're working in a thriller genre, you are going to have a different pace throughout than you would if you're writing literary fiction, which moves at a much slower pace. But also, in every genre, you want to vary your pace. If it's always moving at this crazy fast clip, you're going to exhaust your reader. But if it's always moving at a really slow pace, you may lose your reader. So if we're talking strictly about pace, I talk about suiting it to your genre, suiting it to the mood of the scene that you're writing. If this is a high-paced thriller scene, where you've got a chase scene, let's say, or you want to create high suspense, high suspense is often well-served by fast pace. How do you actually do that? You talked about several ways. You do short sentences. You give a lot of white space. You keep not just short sentences, but keep in mind the feel of your sentences. You can use long, multisyllabic words, and that's going to draw your pace out, or you can keep them short and sharp. And that keeps pace clipping faster. If you have a lot of dialogue, and you break that up, if you have big chunks of dialogue, that's going to slow down the pace. One thing I often see is there'll be a very high-stakes moment in a scene like that, and the characters will be talking like this, where they're simply chatting out the way you would in a regular conversation, what's going on. That's not how you communicate pace and urgency. If a scene is meant to be happening at a fast pace, then you want to, the way we do in an actual fast-paced scene, if you, let's say, had a car wreck, you're not going to call your husband and say, ‘Well, I wanted to tell you that I just saw this car coming by and I hit them and then,' you're just going to go, ‘I got hit by a car. I need your help.' So you want to keep in mind how we communicate, and not just your characters, but you as the narrator. Momentum is a really important thing to talk about too, because very often momentum flags when we lose those key holy trinity areas, like the plot is losing cohesion or the characters stop progressing along their arcs or the story stakes have deflated. When that happens, it doesn't matter how fast your pace is. You're not going to be able to pull the reader back in, because you've lost momentum, which is the basis of what story is. Joanna: I don't want to discourage anyone listening. If you are starting out as a fiction writer, I remember feeling like, ‘Oh, I just have to learn this, this, this, and this, and, it'll be all fine.' And then decade or so later, it's like, ‘Goodness, I still have so much to learn.' Do you feel that? You've obviously written a number of novels, and you do all this editing. It feels like it never stops, right? Tiffany: It never stops. Joanna: Maybe that's a good thing, because why would we bother just writing the same thing over and over again? We need to challenge ourselves. From whatever the next book is, or a book that we've read, that we've just gone, ‘Oh, yeah. That did that thing in a really good way.' There's always something to learn, isn't there? Tiffany: Which I think is part of the process. It's how we grow as artists. You just talked about going back to books that you wrote more than 10 years ago. And part of it is that you're seeing what you're seeing because of that time and distance we talked about. But I would bet that the bigger part of it is that you have grown so much as a writer. That doesn't make those books bad. I look at my early novels, and they're not as good as my most recent novel, but they're not bad. I just was in a different place as an artist then, as a writer. Now I've learned more, and I'm still learning more. Even as an editor. I've been doing this 30 years, Joanna, and I learned something all the time. And if I didn't, I, as you said, I would get bored. That's what the process is. That's how we grow as creatives. Joanna: You just reminded me there, and I'm not comparing us to Picasso, but I have been to the Picasso Museum in Malaga, in the south of Spain. Picasso was from Malaga. They have a museum there of his early work, as a child and a teenager. You would no way look at those things and go, ‘That's a Picasso,' if you compare it to what he was doing in his later stage. But what I love about the visual art community is that you'll go to a museum like this, and they'll be, ‘This was this period, his turquoise period. And this was his orange period. And that was the modernist period. And that was the realist.' It's almost like part of the artist's journey is separating your creative life into stages, with an acceptance that you will grow and change. Whereas I almost feel like in the publishing community, there's this sort of deification of debut writers being amazing. Tiffany: That's so true. Joanna: You know what I mean? Why can't we have this acceptance of these different stages of the artist's life path? It seems to me that traditional publishing just bangs another name, another pen name, on an author. What do you feel about that? Tiffany: Back in the day, in the glory days of publishing, back in Max Perkin's era, my editing idol, the way that writers and publishing worked was that they found a writer with promise, someone whose skill and talent they wanted to nurture. And that became the process. You didn't just sign an author for the two-book deal, and if it wasn't a smash, out you go. So the debut wasn't as important. In fact, I would venture to say that it was more what you just described. That the debut was simply a starting place, which to me feels so much more, forgive me, intuitive, as far as what any artistic career is. If we see it as some sort of finish line, or we quantify success by saying, ‘You are a multi-best seller on your first novel, so you are a successful writer,' I think that sets up an artificial expectation of what being an artist is. We've conflated the business side of the art, which has very little to do with the creative side, with the creative side, which is a constant experience of growth and learning. That's what being an artist is. Joanna: On that growth and that learning, and the things that people talk about when you're an early writer and you don't have a clue what they're talking about, I think author voice is one of these things. You have a great chapter on the author voice. And it's funny, because, again, I'm reading my early… And the only reason I'm rewriting these three books is they're the first 3 in a 12-book series. So, the first book is free everywhere, and it needs to draw people in to the rest of the books, so I can make more money from the series. So that's why I'm doing it. But as you said, like, they're not bad, they're just different. As I'm reading them, I'm like, ‘Okay, I can see a glimmer of my author voice,' but one part of my edit is strengthening that voice, because I know now what my voice is as an author. But it's so hard to define. What are your tips on finding that voice? Or is it literally just a case of having to write a number of books until you discover it? Tiffany: No, I don't think always. That is a way to do it. I love that you called it ‘finding your voice,' and what your voice is now, because I often hear authors talk about creating their author voice, and you don't have to create it. You already have it. We all have a voice, in the way we communicate, in the way we write, as far as our phrasing and our rhythm and our word choice. It's in our imagery. But it also stems from our experiences, our worldview, our background, our cultural inheritance, our frame of reference. All of that already exists inside of you. The process of figuring out your voice is really just freeing that, letting that loose. But there are ways you can do it. One way is to do what you did, and write dozens of books until you figure out what it is. But if you want to figure out what it is, my favorite way of analyzing anything is to look at other authors' work, because that's where we have the built-in objectivity we do not have with our own work. Voice is everything. Frankly, I talk about in the book, voice is the way somebody dances. It's the way somebody sings. It's a director's voice in how it informs their art. Their films all have a same, a similar feel to them. So you can analyze anything at all. But literally, don't just read to read. First take it in as, ‘This is why I love this story,' and then sit down and figure out exactly what it is you love about your favorite author's voice. Is it the way they say things? Is it their phrasing? I remember I once read one of Jennifer Weiner's books, and she was referring to a character as ‘every hipster.' And I thought that was the funniest thing. She had this really unique worldview and way of putting things, that kind of shifted my mindset on them. So, what is it you love about them? That's the best way to learn, really, any craft element, because you have the objectivity. Here's more little tricks that I use. Analyze the impressions that people do of other artists. You can't do an impression unless you understand the essence of what makes that person so distinctive. So, if you look at, for example, Matt Damon doing Matthew McConaughey, he doesn't sound like him so much. He has his intonations. He has his delivery. He has his kind of laconic, laid-back… he says the, ‘All right, all right, all right.' But he does it in a way that evokes what makes Matthew McConaughey, Matthew McConaughey. Jamie Fox does that with John Legend. Why are Christopher Walken or Robert De Niro endlessly mocked, or have people do impressions of them? Because they have these distinctive characteristics. Have someone do an impression of you is incredibly revealing, because you realize how you communicate yourself, how you communicate your ideas. For example, I looked at my own communication style, and I know that I tend to use long sentences, and I use $5 words where a $2 word would do just fine. I love imagery and metaphor and the em dash and semicolons. All of that is part of my voice. But then if we default to only those things that are our instinctive voice, that can become a bit repetitive also. So then, we get to experiment with voice. One way to do that is to take a passage in another author's book and rewrite it in your style, rewrite it with no voice, or write one of your passages in the style of another author's voice. See if you can start to pin down what creates voice, but also differentiate between your character voice and your voice as an author. They're two different things. Joanna: For sure. And this also, for me, I didn't really figure out until after those first three novels. I actually started my new author name. I write fiction under J.F. Penn. Obviously, you use a different name as well. But I feel like my voice as J.F. Penn is completely different to my voice as Joanna Penn. Having two author names really helped me, and also the brand, which is really the promise to the reader. That's part of author voice, too. Once you understand author voice and branding, I feel like they're almost the same thing. I'm Joanna Penn talking with you, and you're Tiffany, and it might be a completely different conversation if it was J.F. Penn and Phoebe Fox. Tiffany: I think that you sort of focus the camera in a different place, if that makes sense? Joanna: Yes. Tiffany: In one persona, this is where the camera is focused, and then you shift to another, I hate to say persona, because it sounds fake. It's not, really. It's just another aspect of your personality. If you're a writer who writes in different genres, for example, as you just pointed out, you may have a different voice in your romance novels than you do in your mystery thrillers. Joanna: That helps me too. It's another trick, because when I go and do my editing or my work as J.F. Penn, it's different to when I go as Joanna Penn. Tiffany: But it's all authentic. Yes? Joanna: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But it helps me; it's another trick. If you're speaking, you put on makeup and you wear certain clothes because you're going out to this event or that event. And I think voice and brand resonate with each other. But that is a massive topic. We're almost out of time. And I do have a really important question. Now, both of us are clearly believers in the importance of a professional edit, where we pay a professional. But many writers struggle with money, especially when they're starting out. You have a great chapter on getting editorial feedback as a frugal writer. Can you give us a few ideas? Tiffany: I don't think finances should ever be a barrier to your creative pursuits. And while I think a professional edit is an incredible tool, and can be a huge help and a shortcut to getting your story where you need it to go, it's not a deal-breaker. Many authors have gotten publishing deals without ever having hired a professional editor, because it wasn't really a big thing. Up until the explosion of indie pub, when suddenly they became widely available. So, there are lots of ways. What an editor is doing for you is sort of like when you're doing a home improvement, and you hire a contractor, because they know all the right people to hire, they'll bring in the best craftspeople, they'll keep everything on schedule. They know what order everything needs to go in. It makes the job massively easier, but also more expensive. Can you do all that yourself? Yes. Will it be harder? Yes. Is there going to be a giant learning curve? Probably. But don't feel that you can't do it. What you're really looking for by hiring a professional editor, you are trying to get someone to hold up the mirror to what you have on the page, and see how closely it reflects the vision that you had in your head. And is it coming across as effectively, efficiently, powerfully as possible? So, how can you get people to help you with that? The first thing is critique partners, which are so valuable in so many ways. The obvious way is you get critique from people who are generally also writers and can give you their input, can reflect back to you what they're seeing, in ways that are actionable, like an editor does. They can phrase it. Instead of saying, ‘This wasn't really working for me,' they can say, ‘I didn't understand what the character wanted in this part of the story.' And that can help guide you in making those revisions. The hidden value of critique partners and crit groups is in doing those critiques on other authors' work, for the reason I talked about earlier. You are so much more objective, and you learn how to see things. You're really just training your editor brain. Once you learn how to make that shift in your own work, you get that distance, and then you learn how to come at your own work with that same objective perspective. The other hidden value of critique partners and groups is that you get to hear, especially in a group… I was once in a huge critique group, which was a little bit unwieldy. It was 25 people, often. But one after the other after the other, you hear all these people's input on story, and you learn to see what they're seeing, why it's affecting people the way they are, and really importantly, how to process the critique that you're getting, because you see very viscerally that there will be things that many of the readers see and point out, and those are probably things that you want to look at, because they're striking a lot of people the same way. And then, each reader will also have her subjective take on it. It's important to remember that all editing, all critique, all input, is subjective, even by your editor, even by a publishing house. Nobody knows the magic formula. Story is as personal as it gets. One of the skills that you want to develop is knowing how to take the feedback you get, and incorporate that, take what works and toss what doesn't, as I always say. Beta readers are invaluable as well. I differentiate those from crit partners. Crit partners can often help you work as you are drafting. Sometimes they work with you at the end of it, just as an editor would, but beta readers generally will read the finished product, and they are often not writers, which can mean that the feedback you get may not be as actionable and helpful unless you help guide your beta readers. For example, on my website, I have, among other free downloadables, I have sample questionnaires you can offer to beta reader, so that if you ask a layperson. The first time I ever gave my husband one of my novels before it was published, to help me with, I said, ‘What did you think of it?' And he goes, ‘Oh, it was good.' I said, ‘Great. Thank you. So, how? What was working for you? What did you think was most effective?' And he goes, ‘It was good.' So, if you give them questions, specific things. They're lay reader questions. ‘Was there anywhere you put the book down and it was a while before you got back to it?' ‘Was there anywhere you found yourself disliking the protagonist, or didn't understand what they wanted?' ‘Was there anywhere you didn't feel especially engaged?' Those are questions anyone can answer, whether you're a reader or not. One thing I suggest, and I'm always a little leery about it, is little baby editors. When I first started, when I wanted to move into developmental editing from copy editing, I didn't have a track record. And I needed one. I wasn't going to ask someone to spend thousands of dollars until I could feel pretty confident that I was offering them that value. So I would offer free and incredibly cheap edits to my author friends while I was learning my skills. You take that with a grain of salt, because you have a little baby editor, who may not be quite as adept at seeing all the things a more experienced editor would see. They may not be able to give you the feedback in a way that is constructive and positive, in a way the more experienced editors might. But it might be a great way to get kind of a bargain edit. I would not ask an editor for this, because that's a little bit insulting, but if you happen to find one of these hungry little unicorns, that can be a way. The only other thing I want to add, though, is that one of the misconceptions I think we've gotten into with this explosion of having editors available is this mindset of, ‘You must hire an editor, because an editor does the editing part.' That is true, to a degree, that they do the editing part. But that is also one of the basic skills every writer should have. We talked a little bit before about the three sort of stages of creating a story, and editor brain is part of writer brain. ‘Writing is rewriting,' Ernest Hemingway said. Editing is something that we can all improve on by doing things like reading books on the topic. Mine, or Sol Stein has two that are brilliant. Dave King and Renni Browne have one specifically about editing. There are great classes and workshops you can take at the University of Chicago, which is the industry standard, standard bearer for editing in general, that offer editing courses. The EFA, Editorial Freelancers Association, offers reputable ones. If you're going to conferences, or sitting in on them in our post-COVID world, if you've ever heard of R&Cs, reading critiques, that's another way to see what agents and editors who are experienced in the business will read somebody's submission out loud, and then talk through exactly what they're seeing about it. That's an amazing way to start getting that analytical, objective distance we talked about. And then, do other people's critiques, and listen to the critiques of their work. That's another way to hone your skills. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, we've talked about loads of fantastic tips today, and I recommend your book, Intuitive Editing, which is fantastic. Where can people find you, and your books, and everything you do online? Tiffany: Easiest place is probably my website, foxprinteditorial.com. That's got a lot of the downloadables I talked about. Tons of free resources, actually, for authors. Recommendations of books. I've got a free YouTube channel that gives tips. I've got a weekly blog that goes out with craft tips and writing life information. I've also got online courses on there, and not just my editing book, but there's a link to my fiction as well, if people are interested in that. And all my socials are on there. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Tiffany. That was great. Tiffany: Thanks, Joanna.The post Intuitive Editing With Tiffany Yates Martin first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Would you like to successfully crowdfund your book on Kickstarter? Monica Leonelle shares practical and mindset tips for creating the right kind of project, as well as mistakes to avoid, and how to satisfy fans — and make money with your books. Monica and I recorded this before Brandon Sanderson's epic Kickstarter which has raised over $32m, which is why we didn't mention it. But clearly, it's a fascinating business model! In the intro, Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri re-edits, re-titles a book to deepen the theme [The Guardian]; and bookbinding fun (pic). Today's podcast sponsor is Findaway Voices, which gives you access to the world's largest network of audiobook sellers and everything you need to create and sell professional audiobooks. Take back your freedom. Choose your price, choose how you sell, choose how you distribute audio. Check it out at FindawayVoices.com. Monica Leonelle is the author of ‘The Productive Novelist' and ‘Book Sales Supercharged' series of non-fiction books, as well as a USA Today bestselling author of fantasy and paranormal romance, under the pen name Solo Storm. Her latest book for authors is Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, co-written with Russell Nohelty, which I supported as a Kickstarter project. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is crowdfunding and how does it work for authors?Different kinds of reward tiers and how to make them financially successful as well as rewarding to fansCommon Kickstarter mistakes to avoidDirect sales and revenue per customerFactors to consider when fulfilling your ordersTackling fears around a Kickstarter campaignMarketing tips and what not to do You can find Monica Leonelle at TheWorldNeedsYourBook.com and at KickStartYourNovel.com and on Twitter @monicaleonelle Transcript of Interview with Monica Leonelle Joanna Penn: Monica Leonelle is the author of ‘The Productive Novelist' and ‘Book Sales Supercharged' series of non-fiction books, as well as a ‘USA Today' bestselling author of fantasy and paranormal romance, under the pen name Solo Storm. Her latest book for authors is Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, co-written with Russell Nohelty, which I supported as a Kickstarter project. Welcome back to the show, Monica. Monica Leonelle: Hi. Thank you so much for having me on again. Joanna Penn: This is such an interesting topic. Last time you were on, a few years ago, we talked about your history and dictating a book, so we're just going to get straight into it today. So, let's start with the basics. Crowdfunding and Kickstarter have been around for years, but I actually spoke to an author recently who hadn't heard of either. What is crowdfunding, and what is Kickstarter? Monica Leonelle: Crowdfunding is basically asking people to fund something before it's done, at least the way that Kickstarter does it. For Kickstarter, it's probably the biggest crowdfunding platform in the world, as a creator, and Kickstarter really only has creator projects on there. I'll explain what that means in a minute. Basically, as a creator, what you're doing is essentially putting up a preorder for your cool idea, your cool project, and you're saying I'm going to do this, this is how much money I need for it, back it now, give me the money in advance, and then I will deliver the project afterward. So that's basically how Kickstarter works. That's how crowdfunding works. I do want to contrast it though with one platform that we see people thinking it's similar to, which is GoFundMe. GoFundMe is a great platform, nothing against that type of crowdfunding platform, but it's not creator-focused, necessarily. So, you could do a creator project on there, but you also see, ‘I have medical bills to pay.' ‘I'm about to lose my house.' So you see a lot of that. Sometimes authors feel like Kickstarter is a begging-for-money type of platform when it's not. It's really just setting up a pre-order for a project that you are confident you're going to deliver on, of course, we don't want projects that you can't deliver on, but setting up a pre-order, and getting people to support you in advance. Joanna Penn: Fantastic. But, of course, playing devil's advocate, we already have an ecosystem for selling books. We can already do pre-orders for eBooks and print books. We can't necessarily do them for audiobooks, but we have this. Why would an indie author or a creator bother with the hassle of Kickstarter, especially since the sales won't help Amazon rankings or bestseller lists or anything like that? Monica Leonelle: It's a great question, and one that we hear all the time. I think there are a couple of things. One is that Kickstarter is really a direct sales platform. So you don't have to pay the 30% royalties. You do have to pay other fees. Kickstarter has a 5% fee that they take, and then there's payment processing fees, and so maybe you're paying, like, 7%, 8% in that, and then there's other costs to doing Kickstarter, but it's essentially direct sales. So, it's a platform that you can use for that. The other big reason that I think is super important is the revenue per reader, or the revenue per customer. If you sell book on Amazon, let's say you're charging $4.99, you make about $3.40 off of that, off of every sale of an eBook. You bring that over to Kickstarter, the revenue per reader, or per backer is what it's called, for a publishing project, tends to be between $25 and $40, if you're doing eBooks and print books, and if you're designing it the way that Russell does his campaigns, there's a big difference in revenue. So, especially if you're starting out, and even if you're not, you can make a lot more money off of very few backers, and then you can take that money and you can do a retailer launch after that, and have money for ads or money for whatever else. Joanna Penn: There's loads to unpack there. And that revenue per customer, backer, $20 to $40, is kind of amazing, and we've obviously seen different things, but that will depend on what you're offering. I know that some people who don't necessarily, haven't maybe supported a Kickstarter will be like, ‘Why would someone pre-order an eBook for $20 or $40?' So, when you talk about designing campaigns, just give us an idea, what are the types of levels? I can't remember what the term is, but you don't just offer a pre-order of an eBook and that's it. There are different levels or tiers of rewards, aren't there? Monica Leonelle: Yes, this is true. They're called reward tiers, and what it is, it's basically a bundle. So, if you think about, on a retailer, you might have a bundle of a trilogy, and you're able to sell that at a higher price. On Kickstarter, you do reward tiers, and every reward tier is a bundle. And you can do cool things with that bundle that you can't do on a retailer. For example, you could bundle an eBook, a print book, and an audiobook together, and have people buy all three at once, and have it at a higher price. You can do pre-orders for the print books, which you can do on retailers as well, but you can also bundle other stuff like merchandise. You can bundle things that you can't really sell anywhere but direct. So, you could bundle an audio commentary. You can bundle bookmarks. You can bundle postcards, basically any type of merchandise. And then, also what I would call digital exclusives. That's a type of merchandise like the audio commentary I was talking about, extra content, exclusive content, bonus content, you can bundle all of that together. You can also do signed copies, which is pretty hard to do on retailers. You typically have to mail them something through FBA. And so, you can just do a lot more. The reason that the money is more per reader, per customer, per backer, whatever you want to call it, is because bundles just, in general, you're able to increase your revenue per sale. If you launch your book on Amazon, you're selling one thing. It's the book, and maybe it's in three formats, so maybe you're selling three things, where on Kickstarter, every reward tier is a different offer. So you can serve more people as well, and add up different audiences. So that's another difference with retailers versus Kickstarter. On a retailer, you really want everything to be very tightly targeted, because you don't want to mess up your algorithms, and also boughts and all that good stuff. Whereas on Kickstarter, you want to add up many different audiences. So you want to have stuff that targets a fan, a very ardent fan. You want to have stuff that targets your lukewarm readers who are like, ‘Eh, I could read this book by this person if I'm bored, maybe not.' And then you want to target people who have never heard of you before. You're adding up a lot more audiences. You're adding up people who like print, people who like audiobook, people who like eBook, people who like fan stuff, and just adding all of that up to make a bigger Kickstarter funding. Joanna Penn: And that's the key, I think. Of course, I saw your project, Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I want that book.' And then there was, like you said, bundles of upsell, with obviously, you have tons of non-fiction books for authors, so I think you had a bundle of those, didn't you? And then there was sort of some audio stuff and courses. What happens is the person who's engaged with the Kickstarter project, who just goes to that page, then finds a whole load of options where they can really decide what level they want to support at. And they may still just pre-order the eBook for $10 or whatever, right? But they could also end up spending more. What about people offering things like consulting or one-on-ones and things like that, which is the access, the highest tier? Monica Leonelle: Definitely. That's another thing that you can't really sell on a retailer. As a non-fiction author, if I'm selling a course, which we did sell a course, I can't sell that on a retailer. There's no way to upload a course on Amazon. And I can talk about it in my book, and then get people to my website, and then get people to my email list, and then get people to my course. But I can't just sell them the course directly while I'm selling them the eBook. Kickstarter allows me to do that. Not a ton of people are going to take me up on that, but let's say 10% of the people who are interested in the book, they're also like, ‘I have a couple hundred extra bucks and I want to get to know this person better, so I'll also upgrade to the course.' And that really matters, that extra money, that matters. Whereas if I just sold them the book on a retailer, like Amazon, or any retailer, I'm using Amazon as the placeholder there, but if I just sold them the book, they may never take that long path to my website, to my email list, to hear about my course. They're not going to take that long path there. I'm going to lose more and more people at every step of that. So that's a huge thing for non-fiction authors. And we do see for a non-fiction author, our campaign hit, it was one book and we had a lot of other offers as part of that, but it was ultimately one book, and we hit $21,500. And then, I haven't done all the numbers afterward, but in the fulfillment phase, we got to over $24,000. That's another thing about Kickstarter that you don't see, is that people actually fund higher because of the fulfillment phase. If Russell and I had launched Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter just on retailers, we would never have made that much money. It's too niche of a book. We were able to make that money, and we had 537 backers. So we've probably ultimately had still less than 600 people interacting with our Kickstarter, but we were able to make close to $25,000. Joanna Penn: That is really great. Thank you for sharing those numbers, because I feel like the Kickstarters we hear about, for example, Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings, which raised $6.7 million, a couple of years ago, and that was for a limited print edition, leather-bound hardback, so, a massive project. And obviously, he worked with a printer and blah, blah, blah, but it made it seem like Kickstarter is out of reach. None of us are Brandon Sanderson. It's unlikely we're going to raise $6.7 million, to be honest. But what you've said there, I love that. Let's say $24,000 from just under 600 people. And, like you said, if you'd have just put that on the stores, then there's no way you would've made anywhere near that. But let's take it even lower. If someone doesn't have an audience at all, because obviously, you have books, you've got an audience, you did it with Russell, who's also got an audience. What numbers should we go for? Could we even put a Kickstarter up for $1,000, and aim really low at the beginning, and then build up? Monica Leonelle: Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform. So, you have to set a funding goal. If you don't hit the funding goal, you don't get any money. And that's to protect you, because if you're doing an audiobook, for example, you actually need $2,000 to do that audiobook. So you don't want to be on the hook to deliver it if you didn't hit the goal. What Russell recommends is that for every book that you're doing on Kickstarter, you have a $500 goal. If he's doing a trilogy, that's his main thing, for the campaign, he would set the goal at $1,500. And this is not theory. We've actually tested this with a group of 70 authors. Not all of them launched. We probably have had 20 launches, but every single one of our authors has funded. We've seen funding on poetry. We've seen funding on children's books. We've seen funding on book boxes, for romance authors, for cozy mystery authors. We've actually tested this with people. Some people, it was their first book. Everybody in our group has funded at over $1,000. And then, a bunch of them have funded at over $2,500. And then, some of the best ones have funded at over $4,000 as well. If you had an audience, if you followed Russell's system really carefully, those people funded at $4,000 to $5,000. And we did have somebody fund at $20,000, but they're kind of a unicorn because they had a big audience. So, we did have that person as well. They're non-fiction as well, so they funded at over $20,000. But the other authors, they were just able to fund because they avoided a lot of the mistakes, basically, that people can make during the Kickstarter project. And some of them, it was their very first book. They haven't launched on any retailers yet. I think one funded at, it was over $3,500, I'm pretty sure. And then one funded at over $4,000. I do think it's good for people who have an audience of zero. I do recommend at least reading the book that we have, Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, because that's going to help you be able to do that. Because also, we see a lot of projects that don't do that, and we can see why, because it's a specific system, and there are some business principles that are not required for retailers that are required for direct sales. I think a lot of it is just learning direct sales, just, principles in general. Joanna Penn: I think that's really important. Kickstarter is its own platform, its own ecosystem. And there are people who just hang around on Kickstarter, right? That's where they like to buy projects, because it means you can support creators you love. I've supported lots of Kickstarters and other crowdfunding things, and I feel like I'm helping this creator, I'm getting something cool, and that might not be available in another way, and you're part of the project, almost, aren't you? You mentioned mistakes. And the book is seriously good value, everyone. As I said, I backed the Kickstarter, so I've got the book, and it's jam-packed with tips, so we cannot possibly get to everything. Give us a couple of common mistakes that people make with Kickstarter that may jeopardize their project. Monica Leonelle: One of the biggest things for publishing projects is a lot of authors want to fund their audiobook. Well, the challenge with funding your audiobook through Kickstarter is that Kickstarter is really focused mostly on print, and also eBook, as part of the print piece though. You have to understand the publishing side of Kickstarter has been built through comics, children's books, photo books, basically anything that doesn't do well in print-on-demand or is not profitable in print-on-demand, those authors have had to go to Kickstarter, because they've got to do larger print runs, it costs more money to make a book. So the people who have used Kickstarter in publishing are the people who were not able to use retailers for publishing. They weren't able to do eBooks. They weren't able to do print on demand. The thing that sells best on Kickstarter right now is a print book, for obvious reasons. Sometimes we see people doing an audiobook-focused campaign, and it's not that those can't succeed, it's just that you're going to make probably, like, 3x to 5x more if you do a print-focused campaign, even if you end up using that money to fund the audiobook, even if you end up putting the audiobook as a stretch goal, or as part of your campaign, one of the reward tiers. That's another thing is you can sell multiple things. You should have a focus for your Kickstarter campaign so it's not confusing, but you can sell other things on that page as well. You can have it focused on print, and then you can still sell the audiobook there. That one tweak, typically, you're going to 2x to 5x your campaign just by making that tweak. Another one that people really mess up is profitability on their reward tier. I'll give you a really easy example. One thing that people do is they try to sell their paperback book for $15 with free shipping in the U.S. And they're like, ‘Well, it only cost me, like, $3 to $4 to print my book through print on demand.' But people are not factoring in the other costs, like the Kickstarter fees, the payment processing fees, the cost of shipping through Media Mail or, we'll talk about shipping, actually, as the third common issue, but they're not factoring in all these other costs. You have to pack the books yourself. You have to get the books printed in a larger shipment, and shipped to you. So you're going to pay shipping costs twice, once to ship to you, once to ship to other people. You have to pay for the packaging. When you add all of that up, right now, even with good print-on-demand stuff, it costs about $10 to $15 to get that paperback to somebody. What Russell does is he charges $25 for a paperback book and $40 for a hardcover. When you hear those numbers, you may be like, ‘Wow, that's kind of a lot. And how can I do that if the book's on Amazon for $14.99 with free shipping?' The answer is you can't. That's another thing is, if you're doing Kickstarter, you've got to look at places where you're competing with yourself. Amazon is always going to be able to print and ship a paperback book for cheaper than you can and faster than you can. So the only thing you have there that is valuable is exclusivity. You see that with our project. We did our Kickstarter launch for the book, and the print book is not available for at least six months after that, because we have to give that exclusivity and make sure that the people who backed, they got something special out of it, basically. So we see that, where $25, $40, you kind of have to be able to be willing to raise your prices on retailers. And then the shipping thing. This is something we see is people assume that because they're books, they can ship via Media Mail in the U.S. I think UK also has Media Mail. It's called something different in other countries, but it's basically a special shipping because it's a piece of media, so, a book. People do stuff like they'll add a bunch of merchandise, and the minute you add even a bookmark, a postcard, a pin, then you're not in Media Mail territory anymore, you can't ship that way, and the costs are double at that point. You have to be very careful about what you're adding as merchandise. Lots of people are like, ‘I want to do coffee mugs.' Coffee mugs are a very, very low-margin item. You're not going to make money off of it, it's expensive to ship, it's breakable. You may have to replace stuff, so you're probably going to lose money on that. That's another thing we see is people just don't pick high-margin stuff. The highest margin stuff is going to be digital. And then, from there, if it's a physical product, you need to look at what's going to be higher margin. Books are high margin, enamel pins are high margin. You probably have to ship them separately, but they are high margin. Typically, you can buy them for a dollar and you can sell them at events and cons and that sort of thing for $10 to $15. So, you have to look at what merchandise is going to be high margin, what merchandise is going to be very low margin. T-shirts, coffee mugs, like, that sort of stuff is going to be low margin. Even though it's cool, you can have it in your Kickstarter project because you like it and because it's cool, but it's not going to make you money. Joanna Penn: Some great tips there. Just one thing on the merchandise, I want to point out to everyone.. Point of information, you might not have the intellectual property rights for your book cover to put on merchandise. So don't assume, people listening, that just because you paid a book cover designer, you have those rights, because there are different rights for different images for things like books versus merchandise. I think that that's important as well, right? Monica Leonelle: Absolutely. You have to have an extended license to put it on merchandising. Joanna Penn: Exactly. You can ask. It's not like it's forbidden, but you have to ask, and you have to get that license. It might be free. You might to pay some more, but certainly that's important. So, that's really great on the issues. And, in fact, this profitability is one thing people are very scared of. I'm scared of it myself. But I think what you've done there is really good, because you've essentially said bundle other things. For example, the signed print edition would be exclusive, but I could also bundle it with a digital audio and the eBook and a course or something. And that will make it better. I do want to tackle some other fears. This is entirely me, but it might also be people listening. I love the way we publish, because I write my books, and then, literally, when I send it to my editor, the book is finished, so I know I can hit a pre-order. I never do long pre-orders. I do pre-orders once the book is essentially done. I am really scared of the thought of having hundreds or thousands, hopefully, of people waiting for my book to arrive, because I don't have to feel that way right now. How do you tackle fear of having all these people hanging over you, waiting for this deadline? Monica Leonelle: What Russell does, and I didn't do this on mine because it was my first campaign, and I should have. So I'll just tell you what he does, because he's the person to watch. Russell makes sure the book is completely done, the book or the books, completely done, edited, ready to ship, at least in digital. So he does that, and that seems to work really well for him. He can fulfill a campaign in less than a month at this point, because he just has really good systems around it. The key point number one is, get your thing done before you launch your Kickstarter. And then the second thing I would say is think about fulfillment at the latest, during your Kickstarter. One thing that I did not do that I should have done is set up BackerKit, or, there's other fulfillment services, but basically, Kickstarter's fulfillment services aren't great. What it is, is after your campaign ends, you've got to send out a survey to collect information from your backers. If you do this through a fulfillment service like BackerKit, you can set it all up ahead of time, and you can send out your survey faster. There is an approval process of three or four days. That was something I didn't know. I'm letting you know that it's important. You can set all of that up in advance and do it during your campaigns, so that you're able to just move through that fulfillment process faster. If you want to get your books printed, you can start to get your books printed ahead of time. But most people, they need the money from the campaign. Kickstarter takes seven days to charge everybody, to get stragglers, the declined credit cards and all that. And then they pay out another seven days. So you're not going to get the payment for that for 14 days. Factoring in that type of stuff into your timeline can help too, on the print side. The digital stuff you can probably distribute it kind of quickly, I would say. But the print stuff, it's at least 14 days. Once you have that, then you can turn around and there's a couple good printers. So, one is Mixam. It's M-I-X-A-M. You can use Lightning Source, of course, or Barnes & Noble or KDP. And then another one, I think it's called 48 Hours. Knowing the people that you're going to work with, or the companies that you're going to work with ahead of time can help, too. Getting the price quotes ahead of time, which you should do anyway, before you even set up your campaign. Even, you can actually also start to upload the files to those places ahead of time, especially if it's your first one, so that you know what their system does, and the weird way that they need their files uploaded, that sort of thing. You can start to do a lot of the fulfillment ahead of time. Russell is able to really predict his campaigns, from doing it so long. And we put those numbers in the book. I don't remember them off the top of my head, but basically, you can predict, oh, I'm going to need 300 copies of this book, because I have this many backers at this level. You can start to predict that toward the end of your campaign as well, and get it set up ahead of time. Joanna Penn: I think this is what scares me and puts me off. And if I'm feeling that, other people will too, which is there's a whole lot to organize. One of the beauties, of course, of self-publishing print-on-demand and eBooks and stuff is it's, you upload it and you make a mistake, you just upload another file and it's done. This print run thing just scares me. Equally, I really want to do this. I'm really thinking of doing my next craft book, which will be How to Write a Novel. I have to do it. I have to do it. I want to do it. I think that it might be quite a good project. You mentioned so many things there. And, of course, that cost would have to go into it too, but it feels like there's a whole lot to learn. It's like starting again on a whole nother platform. Are there people like project managers you can just hire to run campaigns? Monica Leonelle: It's definitely starting, again, on a whole nother platform. If you're familiar with direct sales, which a lot of non-fiction authors are pretty good at direct sales, there's going to be less of a learning curve than if you are not familiar with direct sales, because there's a lot of similarities. There are definitely companies that can do Kickstarter for you. I don't know of any that specialize in publishing. Russell and I, we have a community that we're building around Kickstarter. That could be a place to go, too. Finding somebody who has done a Kickstarter before, who maybe is willing to do some admin hours on your Kickstarter, that could be something good as well, so that it's somebody who knows how to do a publishing Kickstarter, who knows how to do a fiction Kickstarter. Because the other thing about Kickstarter is that they have games on there, they have all sorts of other categories, and trying to apply the stuff that works in those categories to a fiction book, it doesn't always work as well. Selling a board game direct is not going to be the same as selling a book direct. You have to be a little cautious if you're using a company, just because there's no company, that I know of, anyway, that is specializing in the publishing space. So that would be what I would look out for, but I think there's definitely ways to get help. Look for people who have done a Kickstarter before. Look for people who have done a Kickstarter with Russell before, or under Russell's mentorship, because I think that they'll be able to do a lot of that admin. Joanna Penn: Oh, well, I'll just put that out into the world then. Monica Leonelle: I gotcha. I'll let you know some people. Joanna Penn: I do think, because we all have so much going on anyway, and yet I really feel like this would be a good project. So that's out in the world, and we'll see where that goes. Let's talk about marketing, because you mentioned authors who are in your community who didn't even have an audience. If an author sets up a Kickstarter, what are the best ways to market that? Monica Leonelle: As more fiction authors get on the platform, I think there will be a network of support. Doing those, essentially, a cross-promotion, that can be a good thing. One thing you can do is you can get a pre-launch page. It's like a landing page that gives a little bit of info about your project, and people can follow you. Especially if you are typically just on retailers, and you're trying to get your audience to move over. This isn't for the audience of zero question, but if you're trying to get your audience to move over, I think that that's a really great way to do so, is to send them to the pre-launch page and ask them follow you, because it requires them to set up a Kickstarter account, it requires them to show some sort of visible interest, and when your campaign launches, everybody who follows the project is going to get an email immediately. It's like a pre-order segment of your email list, basically, when people follow you. They'll get emails throughout the campaign. I think there's definitely one at the beginning. There may be a couple at the beginning. There's definitely some at the end as well. I'm not sure about the middle, but one thing that I've seen is that the follower count corresponds to the total funding. We see that, and it's a way to talk about your campaign ahead of time, and test marketing messages, but then also to test to see how much interest there is. That's a huge one. The author swaps or the cross-promotion is a huge one. And we saw some of that with it being a community, we saw some people cross-promoting, and that probably helped. Russell also says that if you can bring 25 people to your campaign, then Kickstarter will bring another 25, so that's important. Campaign design is important. I know it's a marketing question, but really, the marketing starts with the campaign design, same as the marketing starts with the product. Campaign design is very important, and getting those reward tiers right from the beginning is really helpful. And you'll be able to tell pretty immediately. When those reward tiers are not right, you can tell, because the campaign's not funding very quickly. Being willing to change directions as well. One thing is when Russell has to raise a lot of money, he makes the timeframe longer on purpose because then if he's watching the projections and seeing those numbers not on target, then he can get rid of those reward tiers. You can limit a reward tier that's not doing well, and then create a new one. You can do all sorts of stuff during the Kickstarter to kind of readjust to get back on target. But other than that, any other way to market a Kickstarter campaign, or to market anything, to market a book, can work on Kickstarter. The one thing that does not work well is Facebook ads directly to the Kickstarter. And the reason why is because if you're going to do Facebook ads on your Kickstarter, the best practice is to have a $50 per backer average or better. Publishing projects, for books especially, they typically fall between $25 and $40. So publishing projects, in general, are just below the threshold. With non-fiction you can maybe get away with it, but what Russell has done is he does Facebook to email list, and then he does email list to Kickstarter. Joanna Penn: As usual, email list is a good thing. But what's interesting also is you mentioned there the pre-launch page, and the people that I've followed on Kickstarter, which now include you, obviously, I'm basically now notified. If you do another Kickstarter, I'm now notified, right? If you're going to do a Kickstarter, is it more about planning the longer-term ecosystem? Because I know, obviously, Russell does lots now. Because then otherwise, you're kind of wasting that future potential. Should you have a longer timeframe in mind for these projects? Monica Leonelle: Russell does four to six Kickstarters a year. I wouldn't start out that way. Because that's a lot. I think planning on using Kickstarter maybe once a year or twice a year could be valuable, and maybe it's only for the big projects. One of the best projects that we've seen on Kickstarter is a never-before-been-published trilogy. So, maybe you typically write longer series, but then you just have this trilogy idea that you want to try on Kickstarter. Maybe you do one of those a year. That could be a good way to use it, because you're right. So, if somebody follows the project, they get notified during the project. If somebody follows you as a creator, they get notified every time you do a project. That's key, and one of the reasons Russell's projects do so well now is because a lot of people are following him. There's that, and then there's the third tool, similar to those first two, that Kickstarter sends stuff on your behalf, basically. And then there are some other things, like “Projects We Love” is a popular one. You want to contact Kickstarter and tell them about your project. And then they're like, ‘Oh, great. That's a project we love.' When they give you that stamp of approval, then people on Kickstarter, in the Kickstarter ecosystem, they start to look at your project, and the project appears higher in search results, and there's all sorts of little things that go with that. They also have Kickstarter project of the day, which our campaign was. I think it was in week five or somewhere around there. And it did have a big boost. Our campaign also benefited from, I think Craig Martelle posted about it in the 20Books Vegas group, which was really helpful to us. We had a podcast interview with Joe Solari that was really helpful. That was another thing I forgot in the marketing, because there's lots of things. One thing that Russell does is he does some sort of live event/streaming in the first week, and something in the last week. And then maybe he tries to have a podcast interview scheduled for each week throughout the campaign, or some sort of other PR. It could be a podcast, it could be a guest post, but some sort of visibility for each week throughout the campaign. That really helps too. Because it's a fan-based platform, being visible to people, either in person, on video, or on audio is huge, because people get to know you, and then they want to support you in a bigger amount. Those types of things can be really helpful. Joanna Penn: Brilliant. The book is jam-packed, and the book is Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter. Where can people find the book, as well as everything else you do online? Monica Leonelle: People can find the book at kickstartyournovel.com. That's our headquarters for the book. And then for me, you can find me at theworldneedsyourbook.com, and you can find Russell, my co-author, at russellnohelty.com. Joanna Penn: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Monica. That was great. Monica Leonelle: Thank you for having me.The post Kickstarter For Authors With Monica Leonelle first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you future-proof your author career by being careful with the publishing clauses you sign? Why are NFTs so interesting for intellectual property? How might DAOs help authors with estate planning? Copyright and trademark attorney Kathryn Goldman talks about these things and more. In the intro, I talk about my art NFTs [JFPenn & OpenSea] and using generative AI through Conjure.art. This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. Kathryn Goldman is a copyright and trademark attorney, and has worked in intellectual property for over 30 years. She runs creativelawcenter.com, which offers resources, workshops, and advice for creative professionals, including authors, artists, designers, and more. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why are NFTs so exciting for intellectual property?Clauses in publishing contracts that might stop you creating or controlling NFTs in the future — and what language to watch out forSpecial editions, smart contracts, and other possibilities for contractsWhat does the end of the term of copyright mean for NFTs?How DAOs could be used by authors and the publishing industry — estate management, author organizations and collectivesAcceleration of blockchain regulations due to President Biden's Executive Order (signed March 2022) You can find Kathryn Goldman at CreativeLawCenter.com and on Twitter @KathrynGoldman Transcript of Interview with Kathryn Goldman Joanna: Kathryn Goldman is a copyright and trademark attorney, and has worked in intellectual property for over 30 years. She runs creativelawcenter.com, which offers resources, workshops, and advice for creative professionals, including authors, artists, designers, and more. Kathryn's been on the show before, talking about estate planning and protecting your intellectual property. Today, we're talking about web3, NFTs, and DAOs. Welcome back to the show, Kathryn. Kathryn: Oh, thank you for having me. Joanna: I'm so excited to talk to you about this. Let's start with more of an attitude question. Why are you so interested in this intersection between web3 and intellectual property? Because I've seen so many people shying away from it and saying it's just not happening. But you embrace the change. So, why is that? Kathryn: I embrace watching the change. It is happening. You cannot turn your back on it right now, but mostly what's intriguing me is that people's imaginations have caught fire in a way we really haven't seen for a couple of decades, or maybe a decade. People are taking this technology and doing things with it that are just limited only by their imaginations, and that is what is fun to watch. It's the creation, from imagination, that is the basis of intellectual property. That's why I am just loving what's going on these days. Joanna: I love that you say that, that imaginations are catching fire, because I feel like the talk in the space has been so focused on finance and cryptocurrency and the financial industry that the creativity side is often under the carpet, in a way. It's not being talked about that much. I love that — ‘creation from imagination is the basis of intellectual property.' I hope people listening are excited about that. Let's get into the publishing industry, specifically, because you have a fantastic blog, and people who sign up for your email list get notified of your new posts, and I'm a subscriber. From a recent article [read it here], you said, “Authors who have signed publishing contracts may have already given up their right to control their work in the metaverse.” Let's say metaverse/web3/whatever we're going to call it in the future. What do you mean around that? What do you mean by given up their rights? Kathryn: Publishing contracts are license agreements between an author and a publisher, and in that license agreement, the author grants to the publisher a group, a bundle of, or part of their copyrights in their creative work. And publishing contracts are dense with language. In those grants of rights, there are these broad provisions that encompass future technologies. And so, if there is a publishing contract that was drafted and signed 10 years ago, that includes language that encompasses future technologies unknown at the time, then the author may have already agreed, with that language, to allow a publisher to mint an NFT of her work without even knowing what an NFT was at the time. So it's possible that there's language embedded in the contract already, covering future technologies, that would give the publisher control over the creative's NFTs. This analysis, this concept, is not without precedent. The same thing happened with e-books. Before e-books were commonplace, there was language in publishing contracts that gave publishers the right to control the creative work in unknown or yet-to-be-known technology. So, about 10, 20 years ago, the battle over can a publisher publish the e-book of a work was fought. If you look back to that battle, and you look at the language in those contracts, and you compare it to the language in today's contracts, there's an argument that publishers might have the right to control NFTs. Joanna: As a really good example of that, many authors just signed an addendum, right? The ones who signed older contracts. J.K. Rowling kept her digital rights for the Harry Potter books, and created Pottermore, which is now, like, $25 billion business or something, because she kept those rights. Kathryn: Correct. So, you can keep those rights. And, in fact, what I recommend in the post, now that we know that NFTs, they are a thing, whether you like them or not, they're out there, that you should reserve your rights to NFTs. You should think very critically about this ‘known and unknown technologies' language in your publishing contract, so that you can make the decisions on how your creative rights are exploited. You can decide whether you want an NFT out there. If you are a person who does not believe that NFTs are a good idea, then you're going to want to prevent a publisher from minting them on your behalf. Joanna: And just to be clear, again, on the language, I've seen contracts that say ‘all formats existing now and to be invented for the term of copyright,‘ or for whatever term that people sign. I've had several people recently who've said that the publishers will not negotiate on that clause, and I'm like, ‘Well, walk away then.' But I guess, for some people, it might be worth it. Are there any other ways of phrasing that kind of clause so that people can keep an eye out for it? Kathryn: They're right. Publishers are pushing back against that because they don't want to give up what may be the future, the bounty of the future. But what we know is we know that NFTs exist now. So, what you can say is, ‘You can keep that clause, but I want to expressly exclude NFTs and any publishing on the blockchain.' And they may still say no. You're right. Then you have to walk away. It's very hard for a writer who is presented, particularly with their first publishing contract, to walk away at all, over any dispute in the language, and that's why publishers are able to collect all these rights, whether they exploit them or not, from the author, because authors and writers are very interested in being published by traditional publishers. Many would rather go that route rather than self-publish. I have had a number of clients who have walked away when the publisher wouldn't negotiate on language. And there are lots of provisions, this is not the only provision, that are make-or-break provisions in a deal. I've had many clients who would walk away, and then hire publishing services to assist them in publishing their work, but maintaining all their rights. Having said that, Joanna, there are also publishers out there who will negotiate on the language. And so, if I'm able to say, ‘Yeah, but this publisher agreed to this language,' so it's not a uniform refusal across the board from the publishing industry. Joanna: Very good point. And the first thing is always to negotiate. You get your contract and you negotiate it. So, you're absolutely right. I want to dig down on it even more. You talked there about saying something like NFT rights to be retained, or even publishing on the blockchain, but the issue I also see is that contracts include language like e-books or audiobooks or digital rights. Let's say even if you could exclude NFT rights, what an NFT is could be the e-pub of the book, right? It could be audio files, MP3 files, of the audiobook. You should include some kind of cover or image. So, again, I feel like even if you exclude NFT rights, what if your contract already covers ‘digital rights,' or e-book rights and audiobook rights? Kathryn: Let's think about that a little bit, because the NFT is composed of the digital file holding the creative work. Whether it's a JPEG or an EPUB or an MP3 or an MP4. That's the digital file that holds the creative work. The other part of the NFT is the smart contract that identifies the original digital file. So you're actually talking about two separate pieces. You've got the NFT code, the smart contract, and then you have the original digital file that is called in the code. Arguably, the publishers have the right to control that digital file. They have the digital rights, but you can say you do not have the right to create a smart contract calling that digital file. We're starting to parse it down a little bit more deeply. If you want to control those rights, there has to be a way in the contract language to do it. And if it matters to you, then you start working and negotiating until you come up with something that satisfies both parties. If the publisher wants the right to mint NFTs, then they're not going to give that up, and you have to decide whether you're going to let them do it. And when you consider whether you're going to let them do it, you want to take a look at whether they've done it before. Or are they going to experiment with your creative work? What is their experience in minting NFTs? Right now, not a lot of people have a lot of experience in this. Joanna: No, especially in the book world, although I think it will accelerate. We'll come to the acceleration soon. But again, and I'm still coming back on different things because I feel like there's so many clauses that people might have. Another interesting clause is reserving the right for special editions. Probably the most famous example, I think, is Brandon Sanderson, who, a couple of years ago, did his first Kickstarter and raised $6.7 million for a 10th-anniversary special edition of his first novel, which had been traditionally published. But in his traditional publishing contracts, he retained special editions. Now, in my head, an NFT can be a digital special edition, because it's not the same as the, let's say, mass-market e-book, for example, or it could be a collectible. What do you think about the language around special editions and NFTs? Kathryn: I think that that is exactly the kind of thing that you can negotiate with a publisher. But what you have to have in mind is what are your future plans for your business? A publishing contract is just one part of your business. What do you intend to do with your creative rights? It is limited only by your imagination. A special edition is separate and apart from the mass market book. Knowing what your plan is for your business is important before you can negotiate the terms that will allow you to move your business in that direction. So you have to think more holistically about your business and what you can do with your rights. There's a steep learning curve involved for authors, new authors, especially. Authors who've been in the business for a while and who have more facility managing their rights and doing many things, different things with their rights, are going to be thinking about this, but it's that new author, that first publishing contract, that is going to prove a challenge. You have to figure out where does it fit in your business, and how are you going to manage your business going forward? Joanna: I think when you say new author there, I would say that's new to the more independent creator sphere, because you might be an author who's been publishing for 30 years, have a lot of traditional background, but you might be new to this idea of owning and controlling your intellectual property. You can be very new in business, but very old in creativity, I guess. Often, I feel like where people are less empowered in this situation is they're not used to going, ‘I'm the creator. I'm valuable. I can negotiate. I can control this.' And, of course, this is so difficult because this is brand new, isn't it? It's very hard to think, ‘Well, how is this going to shake out?' Kathryn: Right. Because we don't know how it's going to shake out. Somebody has to test the waters. Somebody has to go out and do it, and let's see what happens. And because it's so new, you don't know how to negotiate. What's the royalty split on an NFT going to be? What makes sense? Twenty-five percent? Fifty percent? Twelve percent? What makes sense? We don't know because we haven't seen the market working yet, which is a reason to reserve it. And on that point, you can reserve it. Let's assume that the publisher agrees that you can reserve your NFT rights, minting rights, and then the publisher goes out and mints some NFTs with other authors, other writers, other creative work, and they get the experience, and they start seeing success exploiting those rights. Well, then maybe you want to go back to the publisher and say, ‘Okay, now it's time to talk.' ‘Now there's a track record. Now we can look and see what it means,' and now all these other issues that NFTs raise have been sorted out, and there are a lot of issues with these NFTs. Joanna: Yes. And that's why it's so interesting, such a developing space. Let's just go back to the smart contract. We've talked about the traditional publishing-type contract. The smart contract, I think, is interesting. And you mentioned royalty split there. What is so amazing to me, why I am excited about this, is the resale of NFT books, where a percentage of resale goes back to the creator's wallet, or it can be distributed to whatever wallet the author wants e.g. charity. Many authors want to give royalties to charity, for example. All of this can happen automatically on sale and resale, based on the smart contract. How big a deal is this resale do you think? Kathryn: I think it's a huge deal from the creator's perspective, and also from the buyer's perspective. If I buy your book and it's on my Kindle, I can't give it to people. I can't resell it. It's licensed to me. I don't really own it. The idea that I could buy it and resell it, knowing that a piece goes back to you, the creator, so, I'm paying you in the first instance, and I get to give you a benefit again in the second instance, and move your book along, to share with whoever I want to share it with. I love that concept. I do want to ask you one thing. Let's think about this for a minute. I had always considered, because I also work with a lot of visual artists, that this resale percentage back to the original creator would be a percentage of the appreciated value above the original sale price. I hadn't considered it in terms of, let's say that you sell it for face value or for less than you bought it. I hadn't considered that a percentage would go back to the creator in that instance, because what I was conceiving was that the creative work sells for face value, appreciates greatly, and the original creator gets none of the appreciated value. The art contracts that have been drafted over the past decades to try and capture this had all been based on a percentage of appreciated value. What are your thoughts about that? Joanna: I see it as a percentage of the sale and the resale of the whole thing. So, if you buy something for $100 and then I get $100 minus the fee of the platform, let's say 2% because that's the one I'm looking at at the moment. And then if you resell it for $200, I get 10% of $200, not of the extra $100. This actually comes on to the example I use is the secondhand book market, where if it was a physical book, you would sell it for $150 or $200, whatever, and you'd get the $200. And so, that's how I see it is that it's a percentage of the total of the sale every time. That's my understanding. Kathryn: Right. Well, so, with smart contracts, we can decide which one we want it to be. Joanna: I know which one I want! Kathryn: Yes, I understand that. I understand that. And you can make that decision, and that attaches to that original digital file moving forward. But the contracts can be created in many different ways, however the creator wants to do it, but that makes sense. It's straight on the flat resale value. I love the concept of used bookstores now. It's a new business model. Do you remember wandering into used bookstores that were on every corner, at least in my town, and just going through the dusty stacks of used books and picking up the things that you hadn't even heard of or seen and bringing them home? I'm looking forward to doing that again, only virtually. Joanna: And that's where, talking about the metaverse, and maybe virtual reality, augmented reality… I've written about the augmented reality bookstore because physical shelves are not big enough, but if you're wearing, let's say, Apple Glasses, you could go in and turn on your AR filter and the walls would expand into a whole load more virtual shopping spaces. That potentially might include NFTs. There's so much we could go into, but I do want to also ask you about this because, at the moment, we have term of copyright, which is 50 to 70 years after the death of the author. When I first started getting into NFTs, I thought, ‘Oh, okay. So, I do a smart contract, and it will end at the end of the term of copyright. It will just expire.' But then I thought, ‘Well, no, this is like a collectible. If it's a one-of-one NFT edition, it's an original.' And copyright doesn't expire on an original book. You can just keep selling, again, going back to the physical secondhand copy, you can keep selling your first edition of Dickens, and it will still have more value. The end of copyright doesn't make a difference to a collectible. Am I right with that, or am I just completely off base? Kathryn: I believe you're completely correct about that. And a number of lawyers on Copyright Twitter agree with me. Not that we've explored it in-depth, but that is my view of the situation. And just to circle back a little bit to publishing contracts and how this intertwines with publishing contracts: publishing contracts are typically bound by the term of copyright in the creative work. So, if an NFT can be minted that is a collectible, that is not bound by the term of copyright, then that's an argument that, in fact, the publisher does not have the right to mint an NFT because it would be beyond the scope of the grant in the publishing contract, because the publishing contract is limited by the life of copyright, and NFT isn't limited by the life of copyright. Therefore, a publisher doesn't have the right to mint NFTs. So that's just another argument for existing contracts when you can't negotiate new language. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Joanna: That's a good one. And obviously, we're going to see different things happen with this. It was interesting, Quentin Tarantino tried to do an NFT of a scanned copy of ‘Pulp Fiction,' the script [Tarantino NFTs]. I don't know if the court case is settled, but they said, ‘You can't do that,' and I think it was because there was a picture of Uma Thurman or something, which he didn't have the rights to. So, I can just see all of these different things happening as people are like, ‘Well, does this…?' We're going to have these cases, aren't we, where people will hone their language after every case. Kathryn: Where are the cases going to be held? Joanna: Yes. Good point. Kathryn: We have these marketplaces that are not bound by jurisdiction, so where is the tribunal? Who's going to decide this? Joanna: That's a very good point. And, of course, a lot of people do sign all countries, like world English or whatever, but, as you say, yeah, where's the jurisdiction? This is a big deal. There's so much we can talk about. I want us to move on to DAOs, because I really want to pick your brain on DAOs. For people listening, I will have done a little introduction up front, but DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, and the state of Wyoming in the USA now allows DAOs to be officially recognized. [Coin Telegraph] And I guess we're talking about them as a kind of new kind of company. What do you find interesting about DAOs? Kathryn: First of all, Wyoming. Wild, wild west, cowboys. Isn't it just perfect for Wyoming to be the first state to recognize DAOs as an organization? I love that. And talking about that, they have recognized them as a form of LLC, as a form of limited liability company. So, it's not its own entity. It sits under LLCs. It strikes me that they did it for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons that they did it is because if you set up a DAO, you will be, at least in the United States, without a corporate umbrella structure. The individuals who set up the DAO would be subject to personal liability if something goes wrong. Because they'd be treated as a general partnership, and they'd be answerable for the liabilities of the partnership. If you put the DAO in an LLC, then the organizers have limited their personal liability. So I think that's one of the reasons that Wyoming did it that way. Now, think about the liability in these DAOs. We have a track record of some DAOs, well, The DAO, when they established themselves, and they were crowdfunded…it was a hedge fund. It was a hedge fund DAO. So, they're gathering all kinds of money. They're getting money from investors, and they had millions and millions of dollars. A DAO is created using a smart contract on the blockchain. The code in the smart contract is public. Everybody can see it, and that's what brings accountability, and there was a bug in the code. Hackers…I think they were users, actually, were able to steal $55 million, $60 million out of the DAO. At that point, those organizers, if they were identifiable, which I don't know the answer to that, could have been personally liable under general partnership rules in the United States. With an LLC, they will have limited their liability. So I think that's one reason that Wyoming did it that way. Joanna: Just on that, we should say that example is from 2016, in the really super, super Wild West of DAOs. Things have definitely moved on since then, but it does beg the question, as we talked about, if there is no jurisdiction of blockchain, when you can set up your DAO, you would presumably choose a jurisdiction because you wanted to pay tax in that jurisdiction. I wouldn't set it up in America because I'm not in America, but does it make any difference where you are? So, we've got these really interesting questions about where you would set things up, what this might mean. What are you excited about in terms of DAOs for authors? Kathryn: One of the biggest problems that I hear from my client base and from other lawyers that I work with is the estate planning problem. You and I have spoken about this before, and it's still out there for self-published authors who have built a business and who want to leave their self-publishing company or business in good hands, so it can continue to generate income for their heirs or for whomever they want to leave it to. Their heirs are not necessarily suited to continuing the business. So the question is, if you're looking for a trustee to run the business, you're looking for a literary trustee or a literary executor, they're not easily found for self-publishers. The first thing that came to my mind is that this is a great opportunity, a DAO would be a great opportunity, to manage the estates of self-published authors. And then it struck me that why do we have to wait until they become estates? There are ways to use a DAO to assist self-published authors in the management operations that DAOs are suited to. Their accounting and payroll and all of this backend stuff that could be handled by the automated nature of a DAO. Joanna: Yes. And this is why I'm excited too, because I have a one-person business, and I do pretty well, but so much of what I do is, as you say, it's the backend stuff. And how I see the future is that I will have some kind of IP registry chain, and some kind of identity chain, where I can prove things, and then I'll be able to mint, or publish, whatever we want to call it, through blockchain, to whatever platforms there are in the future. I'm pretty sure all of them will have something, and then the smart contracts will automatically execute. Then if I co-write with someone, like my friend, J Thorn, who's also into all this, then it will automatically distribute to his wallet and my wallet. And we can do that with lots of people. And then, as you say, once I die, there will be something in the contract that will automatically start distributing funds to the wallets that I've identified for my future. So it is a way, as you say, of getting rid of the backend accounting. We should also say, I haven't really mentioned this, is that the money is automatic, and it goes in right away, on transaction, rather than manually being put together every month or every six months by people in an office, right? It's automatic. Kathryn: Right. There are two parts to that automation. The first is that it eliminates an administrative burden. You don't have to do it. You don't have to log into your PayPal account and you don't have to send money to your co-author. So it eliminates the administrative burden. The other thing it does is it increases trust between the parties. If you're negotiating, if you are going into a deal with someone… And I've seen this before, with authors who have gone with new publishers, and publishers haven't paid the royalties. That's a problem of trust. What do you do? Do you have to sue them to get your royalties? With the smart contract, especially on the financial side, it automatically happens, and it eliminates that whole notion of trust when it comes to handling the money, which is why I think DAOs are really good ideas for those kind of financial backend pieces. It also makes it really easy to work with people anywhere in the world. It really does eliminate that kind of barrier to entry as well. But I see that, for instance, with publishing, the DAO is not going to be helpful when it comes to choosing the book cover or making marketing decisions. I guess marketing decisions can be designed with algorithms. Amazon is doing that now, for sure. But there has to be human interaction at some level. I don't see DAOs as offering a completely decentralized organization. I think there always is going to, at least now, as I see it, there's got to be human interaction. Humans have to set it up to begin with. Joanna: Yes. Kathryn: Right. Joanna: I've essentially instructed my husband, if something happens to me sooner than I expect, which may be…death is always sooner than we expect, but sooner than we would generally think, then I've basically said to him, ‘Just sell the package of my IP to someone who can do something with it.' Because like we've talked about, my family's not going to do this business. But what I almost see is that we need to organize our estates before we die. That's kind of the point. So, at the moment, that's what I'm thinking. But what I think with a DAO is that if I, and this will take a bit more technology, obviously. If I can set up a DAO so that the publishing part becomes very easy, and essentially, then, all someone has to do, all my estate has to do, is sell the DAO, and the value of the DAO should also be visible, and my IP would all be organized. Then it's a case of whatever the agencies of the future or the publishers of the future, then it's much easier to sell on my DAO, and that makes the estate management easier. Maybe the wallets still exist in there, and maybe micropayments still go out to the original wallets. I can just see that it will, again, make it easier, but, of course, you're right. Someone still has to do whatever marketing we do in the future, but it just should make it easier. Kathryn: Right. That's a great concept. Then your DAO is set up and running. The value is apparent, because we have transparency with respect to what's going on in the blockchain. Then, entities or individuals who have the skillset of running a publishing enterprise can take a look and say, ‘All right. That is something that would be worth my investment of X, because if I use my skillset to run it, I can get five times X return, and that makes sense for me to then buy.' Now we're talking about a whole different marketplace. We're talking about a marketplace for a DAO that controls the NFTs and the digital assets and all of the other things, a marketplace for individually-created DAOs. That's a new concept for me. Joanna: Well, I think about these things a lot. I've got a book here on my desk, Anno Domini by Barnaby Williams, I'm trying to find the author, who wrote it under a pseudonym, and it's out of print and his agent's dead and the publisher's dead. And I'm like, ‘It's impossible for me to find this dude,' or if it was a dude. If there was a blockchain, I could see some kind of authenticity or I could get a message to a wallet, or if I could purchase that through my own DAO, that would be awesome. I do want to talk also about another use case, which to me is author organizations, let's say the Alliance of Independent Authors, or author collectives. So, it might be, for me, indie thriller writers, where we can come together and use DAOs for governance of an organization with a bigger mission, and also have tokens for access to different levels, like a group of thriller authors. There's lots of things we could do as a collective. What do you think about that use case? Kathryn: I think the use case, and I think of it more as membership. It's the same thing. I think the membership use case is really viable. People are out there doing it already. If you are a member of an author's DAO, and you have your token, you have a token, and that has independent value that you can then sell. So, the underlying contract to the DAO would have to control how that token could be sold. If it's an association of thriller authors, then maybe you can't sell it to a romance author or something, or you have to have two novels published before you can be a token owner or something. You have to set up what the rules are. If the token has independent value, which makes the organization more valuable as a whole, now, if it's a membership or a trade organization, you pay your dues, you're a member. You don't pay your dues, you're not a member. There's no value in the membership that you can transact. It makes a lot of sense for that kind of an organization, a membership organization, especially because of the notion that the decisions of the organization are controlled by voting. The voting is made much easier in this kind of an association. You have to think very carefully about when a decision will be taken. For instance, in the Wyoming DAO law, decisions are made by a majority vote. Some DAOs that are out there, and maybe that's not a good idea, maybe it is a good idea. Some DAOs that are out there require unanimous consent. One of the problems with that is that people don't participate. They have their token, but they're not voting. They just, ‘Go ahead and do what you want. I'm not interested in organizing.' So then you can have two different levels. You can have a management level and you can have a membership level. So you have to think very carefully about how ongoing decisions are going to be made, and what percentage of owners are going to, or members, are, who are also owners. Joanna: I was just going to say, being a member is the point, and community is huge in this space, and will continue to be huge. But I'm very aware of your time, and I do want to ask you one more question, which is more about where this might be going. We talked a bit about acceleration earlier, and as we record this yesterday President Biden in the USA signed an executive order about crypto and blockchain, [CoinDesk] basically saying, ‘Yes, we need to look at this. We need to minimize risk. But also, we need to keep the U.S. competitive in the development of digital assets.' And the crypto coins went up in value because I guess most people are seeing this as a positive thing. What do you think might happen because of this? Obviously, this is all speculation, but what will happen next? Kathryn: As I mentioned before we got on the call, I really think that this executive order acts to legitimize the whole industry, blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFT. It gives an air of legitimacy. People are now going to take notice. Our economic future, may just lie in this digital technology. And the United States is going to look at it seriously. And people are already doing it. People are already doing it. Now, people are also losing a whole lot of money. There's a lot of fraud going on. There's a lot of these rug pulls, and there's hacking and theft, and there's all this stuff. It's still going on, even though the smart contracts have developed over the past years. There's still a lot of mistakes being made. One of the things that that executive order is going to look at is how do we protect people from these kinds of consumer-related problems? Because we are not all sophisticated in this area. How do we protect people and still let them invest, and still let it develop? I think that we're one step away from wild, wild west with this executive order. I think things are going to become more normalized. I think the platforms are going to become…they're working on it, more user-friendly. That's where I was going, because it's still pretty difficult. There's still a high barrier to entry. You have to have a certain amount of technical expertise to get into this game. So I think that we're going to see more standardization. I think we're going to see more protections, and I think we're going to see more clarity. The platforms are going to be there for people who are less sophisticated to use, and to get into the game. Joanna: Brilliant. And right up front, you said that you are enjoying watching this space, and I think that's probably how we can end as well, because both of us are watching this space, and both of us are very interested, but, of course, this is not financial or legal advice to get into any of this. If people do want to hear your thoughts as things develop, where can we find you and everything you do online? Kathryn: You can find me at creativelawcenter.com. That's where I write about all the things that I'm thinking about. I offer workshops. I have a membership opportunity there, where I help creative professionals think about their rights, think about how they're structuring their business, help them actually build their business, help them market their work, help them create multiple revenue streams with their intellectual property. And so, creativelawcenter.com, and I would invite your listeners to come and see me there. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Kathryn. That was great. Kathryn: It was. It was lovely. Thank you for having me. I do appreciate it.The post The Legal Side Of Intellectual Property, NFTs, and DAOs With Kathryn Goldman first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do we tell the deeper story that matters in a way that engages readers? How can we tackle the inner critic, self-censorship and fear of judgment? And does social media actually sell books? Nikesh Shukla talks about why Your Story Matters and gives his writing tips. In the intro, Amazon opens up Ads to traditionally published authors; How to Make a Living with your Writing; Ultimate Guide to Multiple Streams of Income [ALLi]; Cemeteries and Graveyards [Books and Travel]; Death's Garden Revisited Kickstarter. Plus, From $0 to $1K in book sales, free book marketing webinar with Nick Stephenson. Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Nikesh Shukla is a best-selling novelist as well as a screenwriter, editor, podcaster and essayist. He has been named one of Time magazine's cultural leaders, Foreign Policy magazine's 100 global thinkers, and he's a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His latest nonfiction book is Your Story Matters: Find Your Voice, Sharpen Your Skills, Tell Your Story. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Learning a hard publishing lesson early onFinding our author voiceHow to deal with fear of judgment and self-censorshipPlanning a novel and shaping a storyThe two different types of writer procrastinationSearching for the emotional truth of a storyDoes social media sell books? You can find Nikesh Shukla at Nikesh-Shukla.com, Nikesh.substack.com and on Twitter @nikeshshukla Transcript of Interview with Nikesh Shukla Joanna: Nikesh Shukla is a best-selling novelist as well as a screenwriter, editor, podcaster and essayist. He has been named one of Time magazine's cultural leaders, Foreign Policy magazine's 100 global thinkers, and he's a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His latest nonfiction book is Your Story Matters: Find Your Voice, Sharpen Your Skills, Tell Your Story. Welcome Nikesh. Nikesh: Hello. Joanna: Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Nikesh: I was quite a shy and awkward teenager, and I didn't really like going out and doing all the sort of miscreant deeds that teenagers do. I just sat in my room and listened to a lot of rap, I read a lot of comics, and I would transcribe all of the rap lyrics and I would read the comics again and again and again. After a while, I started writing my own rap lyrics and writing out my own arcs for Spider-Man and for Batman. I guess some sort of fan fictiony type route is what brought me into writing. And then from that I graduated to what most teenagers do, which is write appalling poetry. Joanna: Woohoo! Nikesh: I think that's probably where it all started for me is just being a shy teenager who had a lot to say about the world and the world was against me, but I could write down how I felt about the world. Joanna: Obviously, you're not a teenager anymore. So how did it go from terrible teenage poetry into Fellow of the Royal Society. Obviously, we're both British, and I don't know if Americans will realize this, this is a really big deal. How did you cross that gap? Nikesh: Who knows? A series of unfortunate events, probably. I don't know. Here's a thing that happened to me when I was a teenager, sort of my origin story. I write about this in Your Story Matters. But at some point, during my teenage years, I saw an advert for an international poetry competition. I think I was 15 or 16. And you have to submit a poem, and you could win a lot of money and go into an anthology. And I thought…I'm a sick poet. So I sent off a poem that was your very standard teenage fare. Teenager goes for a walk, spots nature and nature reminds him that we're all going to die someday. Really bad stuff. It was really bad. And I sent that poem, it was called Train of Thought, or Trail of Thought. Get it? Because he was on a walk, a trail and he was having thoughts and the thoughts were wandering. At some point, I got a letter back from the International Poetry Foundation, or whoever it was saying, ‘You haven't won the International Poetry competition, but we love your poem, and we're going to include it in our anthology, Awaken To A Dream.' And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I'm going to be published. This is amazing. Yes, this is happening. I'm on my journey now!' Then it said, if you wish to be included in the anthology, then you have to buy a copy of the anthology which costs 50 pounds, but we will give you a discount of five pounds, so you just have to pay 45 pounds, and then you can be in the anthology, and we'll send you a copy.' I didn't realize what the listeners are probably realizing right now, I was a teenager and I was desperate to be published. I was a prolific bad poet after all, until I begged my mom for the money. I saved up I pulled together savings, I sold some comics and I scrimped and saved and I managed to scrape together 45 pounds, got my mum to write a check, gave her the money. I think she knew what I think we're all expecting to happen. I sent it off and then about six months later, I got a big package through the post and it was Awaken To A Dream. Now, let me just describe Awaken To A Dream to you. It is A4 size. It is over 500 pages long. The paper is very thin, you know the type of paper you might lie in a cake tray with. And there are like between five and seven poems on each page. Joanna: They made lot of money out of that! Nikesh: They made a lot of money out that. We all paid 45 quid for that. I did the maths actually, I've spoken about this before. I did the maths. I imagine, because it was cheaply printed, and you were paying for package and posting, they would have cleared at least like 250,000 pounds from that. But that's a very rough maths of how many people, how many poems were in there. I was devastated because I'd really saved up as much as I could to get this poem in there. The realization I had after that was that my words mattered. And if they mattered, then I needed to make sure that they always were published in a way that highlighted how much they mattered. So that was my origin story. I kept writing. I was working on a book, when I was at university called Darkie. It was my attempt to tell my uncle's story because my uncle had did some amazing activism in the late 60s when he came to the UK. I wanted to write his story, but it was just a story. It wasn't characters, it was just me recording the things that I knew about my uncle, and not really knowing how to write a novel at 19. But anyway, I went to a concert by the band Asian Dub Foundation, who were my band at the time, I was obsessed with them. They were just the most amazing band in the whole world. They were performing at the University of London union, and I went to see them. Afterwards I saw their lead singer, a guy called Deeder Zaman, just hanging out. And I went to talk to him, and he was just the most lovely guy. He was really interested in me, really wanted to inspire young people. Told me to send him what I had of the book, which I did later on that evening, when I got home. He gave me his email address. I send it to him and he was like, ‘This is great. Do you want to meet up for a cup of tea?' I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I'm meeting Deeder Zaman from Asian Dub Foundation for a cup of tea.' So I went to Green Street, which was near where he lived at the time. We sat, we drank tea, and we ate chaat. And we talked about writing and rap. He asked me to read him some of my poems. And so I did. And he was like, these sound like raps. And I was like, ‘Do they?' and he's like, ‘Have you ever rapped before?' I was like, no. So he said, ‘Okay, come with me.' He took me that day, took me back to his house. And he put some beats on and just taught me how to rap over an afternoon. It was just the most inspiring moment of my life. It was the moment I stepped out of my shell. After that, I spent my 20s trying to be a rapper. I wasn't very good. But I was inspired by him and by the space he gave me. I was also writing short stories. And because I was really inspired by politics, I was using short stories to talk about unsung heroes. I wrote this short story about this young boy called Zahid Mubarak, very big story about miscarriages of justice in the political system, in the prison system in the UK, and I wrote a short story about him. And I sent it off to an anthology. Because at this point, it was the mid-aught-teens and I was doing a lot of spoken word stuff alongside the rap and alongside writing short stories, and surrounded by all these amazing poets like Musa Okwonga, and Selena Godan. There was this guy called Nii Ayikwei Parkes who was running all these amazing nights. And he was also working on anthologies. One of them was called Tell Tales and volume one had just come out and it had like short stories by amazing writers. He was working on that with Courttia Newland, who was a hero of mine. I loved his novel, The Scholar. They were then taking submissions for volume two, and I sent this short story about Zahid Mubarak in. They published it. And so actually, the first time I was ever properly published, was in a book edited by Rajiv Balasubramaniam and Courttia Newland, that Nii Parkes had put together. The moment I realized that I was a writer, not a rapper, a novelist and a fiction writer, not a musician in any way, was the moment I got that package through the post. Again it came to my parents house where I was living at the time. And this time, it was book sized, and it had a barcode, which I was like, ‘Oh my god,' automatically this is legit, people can pay $9.99 in a shop and get this. And I looked at the contents list. I'd been paid for it as well. I've been paid the most money that I'd ever been paid for a single job in my entire life by that point. And I was paid to be in an anthology with Kamala Shamsi and Leonie Ross and Romesh Gunesekera and Gemma Weeks ago, and Courttia Newland, my hero. That was the point in which everything changed. I was like, I need to do this now, this is where my heart is at, this is what I'm good at. So that's how I became a writer. Joanna: I think what's great about what you've just talked about, there, is one, how long things take. But two, you started by saying you are shy and awkward. And many of us here are introverts. The people who did stay at home reading comics and books. That's what we did, and still do, in fact. But then you stepped out and you met people, and you met some of your heroes, and you put your work out into the world, whether it was meeting that rapper for tea, and then it taking the opportunities as they come. Even though that first rip-off, vanity press thing, that actually helped you, it helped push you into valuing your work, which is something that many people struggle with. I love that it took that long, and you did all of that. Let's come to the book, because there's three parts, find your voice, sharpen your skills, tell your story. So let's start with find your voice. Because again, this is the kind of a long term thing, and many writers struggle with voice. How do you define author voice? Is it something we can easily find? Or do we just discover it over time? Nikesh: This is a difficult thing. This is actually the thing that I don't think can really be taught in creative writing classes. I think creative writing classes can show you the way to develop your voice, but they can't teach you voice. It's so wrapped up in who you are as a person, as a writer, as with the interest you have, with the kind of the delivery in the execution that you want to attempt. With the lens that you want to cast upon the world and the tone that you want to give to it. It's so unique to you. I'm sure there are listeners amongst us. I'll just give you a very live example of this. I think I know what my voice is. But then I read last year or the year before whenever it came out, or the last few years, obviously feel like one long year to me. But whenever I read Luster by Raven Leilani I was like, oh my god, this is amazing. I need to write like Raven Leilani. Why don't I sound more like Raven Leilani? I tried it. I tried to write like her, but I can't write like her because only she can write like her. And also, I write like myself, and me writing my version of how Raven Leilani writes is just disingenuous. It's not who I am, and it doesn't do what she does any justice either. I think voice is the uniqueness of you. Basically, it's the thing that makes your voice you. It's the thing that makes your story only the story that you could tell. We could all write a story about love, but only I can tell this story in this way, at this point in time. Only you can tell that story that you want to tell at that moment in that way. Voice is so wrapped up in the way we tell stories and the execution of the way we tell stories. Actually, the only real way to learn that about yourself is to write and write…and write things that you're comfortable writing and write things that you're not comfortable writing and ways that you feel comfortable writing and write in ways that you don't actually feel are your voice and just see what fits and just keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it. And then it clicks. My first novel is actually the third manuscript length thing that I wrote. As soon as I wrote it, I knew it was the one, because it hit the tone that I'd wanted to have all along. Before I started that novel I had, I'd been given a book by Niven Govinden, a very dear friend of mine, and one of my mentors, he gave me Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead. Amazing, amazing book. It's one of the funniest books. And I am a comedy writer at heart. I'm a big studier of comedy. That book gave me permission to write comedy. I read it and it was so funny and so warm and so textured and just so rooted in who the characters were. It made me realize that the thing that I wanted to do was write comedy. That novel just came out of me in a way that felt true to my voice because it unlocked the missing piece of my voice, as it were. I do think there's a time element and there's a doing it a lot element and there's also a trusting yourself element as well. Because the other thing I think about creative writing classes and books about writing, I know I've just written one, is that they tell you so much about structure and they may do it in a very matter of fact way or an accessible way, like I've done, or they may even do it in a more esoteric way, or a sort of slightly more highbrow way. The effect that they can sometimes have on writers is make them trust their instinct less and actually, our instinct is ultimately all we have. I always think that your instinct is the thing that's telling you what your voice is. So learn to trust your instinct. Joanna: I feel like I found my voice in like book five. But then I didn't write as much poetry as you. I was thinking one of the issues I always had with those early books was a fear of judgment. And therefore, I self-censored. I had an instinct, but then I said, ‘Oh, I can't lean into that instinct. Because what if people think X about me?' What would you say to people who might be struggling with fear of judgment or self-censorship? Nikesh: If I knew the answer to this. I still struggle with that. I still struggle with that imposter syndrome. I still struggle with the inner critic. There's actually a section in Your Story Matters where I talk about how to work with alongside your inner critic, because I think, often our inner critic is a self-defense mechanism that we can listen to what it's trying to say, rather than trying to fight against it. The main thing to say is, rejection is part of the writing process. Because it's always a process of whittling it down to the one agent that can get it to the right editor who can get it to the right reader. And the thing is, once a book comes out, it doesn't belong to you anymore. It belongs to readers, and you will find that readers will project all manner of things onto your work that you may not even have considered. For example, I once got a one star…never read Goodread's reviews, by the way. Joanna: No, don't go anywhere near it. Nikesh: I once read a Goodreads review of my third novel where I got one star because I didn't teach the reader enough about the British Empire. But it's a multigenerational family drama. It's not about the British Empire. Maybe go read a book by a historian. Mate, there are many out there. So knowing that readers don't read things objectively, we all project ourselves on to everything we read. So knowing all these things, I think it helps me to realize that actually, the only thing that matters really, for me, is making sure that the thing that I'm writing is the best thing that I can make it and it matches what my intentions in writing are. Because there are so many other parts of the process that it doesn't belong to me, after a certain point. As long as I get it to a position where it doesn't belong to me anymore and I'm happy to say goodbye to it, then that, to me feels like the best way to think about it. I also try and visualize the one reader who needs to read this book rather than think about the many readers who could read this book. I think about the one reader who needs it the most. And focus on them. Joanna: That's a good tip. I like that. And then you can also pretend they're really friendly and nice and will write you a good review. Nikesh: Yes. I spend so long telling other writers don't read reviews, good or bad. Don't go on Amazon, don't check your sales ranking. Don't ask your publisher for sales updates. Don't like scour the various listicles and go, ‘Why am I not on this listicle?' Because there's so much of it that you can't control. But the other thing is, I probably do all that as well. You can't help yourself because there is a part of you that has just put a piece of your soul out into the world and you do want that external validation. I think for me, it's important to recognize what external validation is helpful what external validation is unhelpful. At various parts of my career, I found myself…what's a nice way to put this…being the hate object of a lot of people because of my political views. Once you've been through that kind of dragging on the internet, you realize that a lot of this stuff doesn't matter. All that matters is that moment when it's just you and the page, the silence of the room that you're writing in. And that moment where you read back on the thing that you've just read, and you think, I've just articulated something that communes with the cosmos in some way. Joanna: That's great. Moving on to the other parts of the book, you talk about sharpening your skills. Let's talk about how you plan a novel because obviously, some authors plot, other people discovery write. And this is something that obviously is different between everyone. How do you plan a novel? And how does that shape your story? Nikesh: Look, I've written this book. And that doesn't mean I take my own advice. I think each novel is very different, because I think different book ideas come to you in different ways. There have been times where I've planned, I've had a really great idea. I planned it and planned it and planned it, and then the point in which I sit down to write it, it just doesn't match the plan anymore. And there have been times where I've just gone by the seat of my pants for that first draft. And then I've got to the end and when I come to the idea of like, ‘Oh my god, this is just too gargantuan a task, I don't know if I love this enough to put all that time in.' I would say that for every novel that gets published, there is a full-length manuscript that didn't make it, because that's just how I write. Someone once said that a first draft is like shoveling sand into a sandbox that you will eventually make sculptures from and I really like that. But just to add to that, when you're in the shower, or you're doing the washing up, and this amazing idea comes to you, this amazing idea, your brain has entered buffering mode, because you're just doing something that doesn't really require much thought and your mind wanders. By the time you get to your desk from the shower, or from the washing up to record the amazing thought, you record it, you then look back at it, and it never matches that amazing thought that was in your head. That to me is the early draft. It's that sort of slippage that occurs between thought and execution. And so much of the editing and the rewriting is about getting it closer to the head thought. I think giving yourself permission to spend a lot of time in the edit, and also giving yourself permission to plan but also adjust as you go because you want to give yourself the freedom to find new things as you write. Because as you get to know the characters more, you discover different things about them. And if you don't give yourself that space, then you can end up paralyzing yourself. So much of writing a novel is knowing what your intention is for the novel, what your big question at the heart of the novel is. Also planning and knowing the general direction, but also allowing yourself to find new things as you go. And also giving yourself time to edit. In the mess of all of these things, and novel emerges. I also really think that it's important when you're writing a novel. I think it's time. I see so many writers every single week, it seems, spout the same thing about write 1,000 words a day. I just think it's nonsense. To go, ‘You must write 1000 words a day, if you're to be a writer.' I would much rather spend an hour a day on a book. Because time for me is more important than volume. I'd much rather have the time to write two great sentences, than write 1,000 words a day. On some days, I can do that in 45 minutes and other days, it's a real hard struggle, and I'm just padding out and then I've got that meeting coming up. I might have to just fill out the word count with nonsense that I know I'm going to have to delete in six months time when I come to the edit. What's the point of that? So just spending time is the most helpful thing. I think. Joanna: I agree on that 1000 words a day. When I'm trying to get a first draft done, I will try and get those first draft words out. But then, like you say, if you move into an edit process, then you're not putting out 1000 words a day, but you tend to finish the draft and then go back and edit or cycle through. Everyone's different. And every book is different too. Nikesh: 100%. This isn't school. So we're not like fighting against the very concept of mainstream institutional education. You've chosen to write a book. So you have to really think about the best way in which you work. You also have to understand that there's useful procrastinating and there's useless procrastinating. Useful procrastinating is getting into Google holes, and doing research and reading stuff and all the rest of it. As long as you're doing that alongside your manuscript, that is great. Then there's useless procrastinating, which is like going, ‘Oh, I've got a great idea for a short story, I'm going to work on something else.' But you know the best way that you work, so really think about that. I write best in the morning. So I try and do all of that stuff in the morning. I know that I work in 45 minute bursts. So I do that. Also, every novel is different. The novel I'm working on at the moment, which is not at the point where I really feel like I can talk about it in any useful way. But the novel I'm writing at the moment, I'm writing it slightly differently to how I've written previous things, because it's so much more of an experiential novel, and a character study, rather than like a plot driven thing. I need to write it slower and spend more, more…fewer words…how do I explain?Yeah, see, I can't talk about this. I was going to say, try and say something like, semi sensible about the writing of it, but actually I'm just spending a lot more time being forensic about it. It's a novel about captured moments rather than a novel where this happens, it forces this person to make a choice, that choice has consequences, then that they have to make another choice, and so on, and so forth. It's a series of fragments, and it needs to be treated as such. Joanna: We'll keep an eye out for that in a few years' time. But the other part of the book, tell your story. I think this is really interesting, because you mentioned that you have a political stance, you have some issues that you have tackled in public, and I feel like there's this fine line between wanting to communicate important truths about the world and society. Then there is delivering a story that readers love to be engaged with. There's that balance between preaching and storytelling. How do we tell this underlying important story while still telling a good story that readers love? Nikesh: Good question. I think the way to do this is to remember that telling a story isn't about giving us the black and white of it. No one wants to read an essay, or a short story, or a piece of fiction that is binary in any way that goes, ‘This is right and this is wrong. This is good and this is bad.' We're much more interested in the greys, we're much more interested in the complexity of life and the complexity of people. The way I talk about it in my class, is I'd say, those of us who've seen Avengers Endgame, if you imagine that film is Thanos' film, then you realize that you've got a really complicated protagonist at the heart of it, because Thanos is set up as the villain. But he is a complicated, compromised villain. He believes what he's doing is right. He has a point. And it's important for us as readers or viewers to always think that our antagonists have their own moral code. They are doing something that they think is right, and that they're maybe going about it in a way that's slightly different to how we might go about it. He's going to lose things along the way. And he's going to make compromises along the way, but they will push him towards his singular vision. That's what makes him an interesting villain, because at some point, you should be able to go…'He kind of has a point.‘ Which then makes the film and the whole concept of good versus bad, good versus evil or right versus wrong very interesting, because maybe if Thanos had had a better teacher, or better mentor or better parent than maybe he wouldn't have gone about deleting half the universe. If you apply that to writing about issues or writing about the way society is, think about what the emotional truth of what you're trying to write is, think about the ways you can complicate those emotional truths, and just think about not having people come at it from fixed positions. If they are coming at it from fixed positions, mess with those fixed positions as much as you can. What you what is for a character to go on a journey, and come out the other side. This is how Kurt Vonnegut described it in; there's a really good lecture he does called The Shapes of Stories, which you can find on YouTube. He does one where he draws a curved line, it goes, ‘Man in a hole. Man finds himself in a hole and gets us gets himself out of the hole, and finds himself better off for the experience.' I think that most stories have to have that thing. It's much more about the journey to the revelation, the journey towards the moment of discovery, rather than the moment of discovery. It is that cliche of the friends we made along the way. When you're writing about political things, just think about the people who are at the heart of them. What is their position? How can you complicate things for them? What does this mean for them? What are the stakes for them? What do they stand to lose? What do they stand to gain? And at their core, what is their central journey? Stories can be about anything. And also, no one really wants to read a story that's just your political point, if you're going to do that, just write a series of tweets, rather than a book. Joanna: I love that. And I think the book is fantastic. I do want to ask you about book marketing, which is always a challenge for authors. Now, you've got memoir, you've got YA fiction, you've got other books. How are you marketing this nonfiction book in a different way than marketing your other types of books? Nikesh: I think in terms of marketing, the important thing to remember is, and I've seen this firsthand how little social media actually moves the dial in terms of sales. Sure, I can make a lot of noise on social media. ‘Here are some infographics that are quotes from the book, and you all know it's coming out!' But, actually, it's got such a low conversion rate of sales. And that's probably the only place where I have an audience. They're an audience who are waiting for my angry tweets about politics rather than going, ‘I'm going to buy this guy's book.' Brown Baby, my parenting memoir, came with a podcast. A lot of that was just because I had a lot of conversations with other parents along the way, and a lot of things that I couldn't include in the book, and I wanted to find a way of continuing those conversations, but also platform other people's voices. The essential question at the heart of that memoir was how do we raise our kids to be joyful in a world that feels bleak? Which is a thing that most parents think about, and I wanted to find a way to give those parents the space to talk about it. And then with Your Story Matters it's actually the other way around with that. The substack was first. What happened was, I got employed to run a creative writing course, which I love doing, it's one of my favorite parts of the week. But I have, in the past, been critical of creative writing courses that have course fees, and how the industry goes to those courses first to find exciting new debuts. And it's not about the courses themselves, but it's about how they're prioritized by literary agents. There is a privilege in being able to afford to do with those courses, and so I thought, why can't I just make my course notes free? So I started a substack newsletter, and was just pushing out my course notes for that week, over the course of six months, and it quickly gained a following. My editor for Brown Baby was like, ‘Well, why don't we just put this out as a book?' And I was like, ‘Yeah!' And then she and I talked about you can't just take a bunch of substack newsletters and go, ‘Send this to the printing factory!' We have to work out what the unifying thing about it was. My editor, the amazing Carol Tomkinson, she was like, ‘You've been a mentor and a teacher for so many writers over the years.' I've mentored a lot of writers who've gone on to huge, huge things over the years, and I was a youth worker for a really long time. I do lots of school talks. I do lots of university talks, I teach in school, I've taught about story, I've taught workshops, I now teach at Faber Academy. And I've taught in so many different contexts, but they've always had the same unifying thing which is the starting point isn't, ‘How can I be a better writer?' The starting point is, Your Story Matters. And you have to tell it because if you don't, who will?' That became the unifying thing for the book. And so that's how that all came about. There are all these sort of add on bits I do. But I am wary that I think people place a lot of importance on having a social media profile, doing all these extra things. But actually I do say in the book, I can't help you write a best seller, and I can't help you get published, but I can help you write the best story that you feel you can write. I feel like I'm asked all the time by writers like, should I go on Twitter? Or should I have a social media profile? Should I like shout about issues to get noticed? And I'm just like, ‘No, just write what you need to write.' You don't have to have a profile because the writing will trump everything. You can have a million followers and be a rubbish writer and still get a book deal. But I'd much rather, if you don't feel like things like Twitter or Instagram are natural places for you, then people will spot that and you won't build up the following you think will help you get published and you'll get frustrated. And it'll take you away from the writing, and actually, the only thing you can control is the writing. So just keep writing. Joanna: That's fantastic. Where can people find you and your books online? Nikesh: On social media! Joking. Basically I have a free Creative Writing newsletter that you are more than welcome to sign up to, nikesh.substack.com where I post up a weekly thing. I'm on Twitter and Instagram as myself. The main thing is those of you who are writers who want a book that might, it's not going to help you get published, it's not going to help you write a best seller but it might just help you figure out what you're trying to say, then Your Story Matters is out and available wherever you feel most comfortable getting books. Be that a library, be that the dreaded A site, or be that your local independent bookshop. I make no judgment on where people buy their books because it's so many people have different needs and different accessibility requirements and all the rest of it. So wherever you feel most comfortable getting a book, please do get it. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Nikesh, that was great. Nikesh: Thanks for having me.The post Your Story Matters With Nikesh Shukla first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What if the traditional publishing model is not the best way to publish a book in a digital age? What if publishing it as an ebook on Amazon is not the best way, either? Elle Griffin questions the established ways of publishing a book and explains how she is using SubStack and NFTs for her words. Elle Griffin is an author, editor, freelance journalist, and creative entrepreneur, using new methods of publishing to reach readers and make multiple streams of income with her work. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why the economics of publishing most books don't add upTips for authors who want to use SubStackHow SubStack differs from PatreonIdeas for authors who want to get into blockchain and NFTs with their wordsEmbracing change and technology as a creator You can find Elle Griffin at ellegriffin.substack.com and on Twitter @novelleist Transcript of Interview with Elle Griffin Joanna: Elle Griffin is an author, editor, freelance journalist, and creative entrepreneur, using new methods of publishing to reach readers and make multiple streams of income with her work. Welcome, Elle. Elle: Thanks, thank you so much for having me. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. Before we get into more of the technology, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Elle: I've been a writer for a really long time. I actually started my career in the content marketing side of things, and then moved my way over toward editorial. Now I've been an editorial journalist for a number of years. While I was working on that, on the side, I wanted to write a novel. So I wrote a gothic novel called Obscurity and when I finished it, I did all the normal things first. I sent it out to agents and I was thinking maybe that would be a good idea. But as I was doing that I was researching publishing as my own, like a journalist would, researching the industry, trying to figure out how my book could best be successful. That's when I decided that my book was not a mass-appealed kind of book, it was not going to have 100,000 followers, or buys, purchases. So I decided that it would be better off for a couple of thousand people that would really love it. And if that was the case, I was interested in doing that as part of the Creator Economy, which is a newer idea where the idea is that the author or writer gets paid monthly. People subscribe to that author monthly, as opposed to, ‘Let's pay this author $10 every time, every five years when they have a book come out.' The idea is you subscribe to an author ongoing, and they provide behind-the-scenes access and things as you're going there, similar to your strategy because I know you have a blog and a podcast on the side of writing fiction. So that's what I've been doing. I did a newsletter on SubStack, about a year ago, which has explored all of this and has been a very interesting experiment. Joanna: I want to start with the SubStack experience because one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I've had so many authors ask me about SubStack. Now, of course, when I started doing this, I started writing in 2006, it wasn't around, but I grew an email list as one does. I've always kind of felt SubStack is just an email list that someone else manages for you. So I've been like, ‘Okay, I've got to ask someone why it's so good.' So let's start with the fiction and we'll get back into the nonfiction. You serialized Obscurity on SubStack. What are your tips for authors who want to use SubStack for fiction in particular? Elle: When I first started serializing fiction on SubStack, I pitched the idea to my readers, I said, ‘Look, okay, publishing doesn't work. Here's all the reasons why. What if we bring serialized fiction back in the form of a SubStack newsletter, I'll send out a new chapter of my novel every single week, you can subscribe to it for $10 a month or $50 a year and get the whole book. For an added tier, you can pay $200 and get access to the hardcover very first edition of the book when it comes out.' That article just went insanely viral. At the time I wrote that article, I had done a lot of research on SubStack and, basically, everyone was doing nonfiction there. You're not wrong, SubStack is pretty new and it only really started reaching mass appeal in the last two years, when they got funding and started investing in it a lot. So it's fairly new, but it's picked up steam really quickly. And that article saw 60,000 views in one day. One of the co-founders of SubStack reached out to me and was like, ‘We want SubStack to be a place for fiction. We love your idea.‘ All of these fiction writers started following me at that time, and were like, ‘Whoa, like, this is such a great idea. My books have been published on Amazon, and nothing's been happening to them at all. So this is such a cool idea. I'm going to try this, too.' What started out when I wrote that post, there were I think, three or four fiction writers on SubStack, and I was one of them. And then it just exploded from there. I think there are hundreds, if not thousands now. Because of that SubStack added the fiction category to their website, they ended up hiring another person to help recruit fiction writers to the platform, that's how they got Salman Rushdie to join and some of these really big authors to join. So it started this crazy movement and now I think it's very fascinating because there are all these writers you can find and follow on SubStack. You can read their fiction, a new chapter each week, or however often they publish. And because SubStack has this community element built-in, you can comment on each other's work. And then comments lead back to your work. So everybody's networking through it, it's been really fun. I think it's a good idea personally. Joanna: It's so funny because what you just said there you can comment and it leads people back to your work. That's exactly what we did in the early days of blogging. It was like go on people's blogs, leave comments, and that will bring traffic to your work and linkbacks and all this. And then what happened was that changed, and people moved. I used to get a lot more comments, and then people started commenting on social media. So those comments went away. What you're talking about there, it sounds like essentially SubStack is like a serialized blog. Elle: Yes. It's very similar to blogging in the aughts. I had a blog then, too, and it was very similar. And you're right, we lost that and all those comments into social media. I wish I could tell you all the things they're building because I'm a beta tester for them now and the things that they've got, it's just down the pipeline, it's every writer's dream. But it's exactly that, it's allowing writers to network with each other and find each other and follow each other. Now, when I write an article on SubStack, I get hundreds and hundreds of comments and that never used to happen when I used to just have a blog or like, I think, between when I had a WordPress blog, and SubStack, I had a MailChimp newsletter, or like a tiny letter newsletter, and those I mean, I have barely any interactions. So engagement is really beefed up there. Joanna: That's so interesting. You've just changed my view now because I was thinking SubStack was just like an email list, but what you're saying, it's more like a blog with an RSS feed through email. I get your articles by email, but essentially, they're coming from your SubStack blog. I need to think about a much bigger ecosystem. Elle: Yes. If you go to ellegriffin.substack.com, you can see all my ‘newsletters.' It's like mixing a WordPress blog, with a newsletter, like a MailChimp newsletter, with a social media, only you can do it all in one place. As the writer, all I have to do is write and click send. So it's very cool. It's like building it all in one. Joanna: Does it include podcasting as well, or video or any other media, or is it writing focused? Elle: Yes, so you can have your podcast on your SubStack, and you can also push that out to Spotify and anywhere else, but a lot of people have SubStack or SubStack podcasts, and you can just follow their podcasts. The interesting thing with SubStack, too, is a lot of newsletters will charge you. I'd have to pay $30 a month or something to send a newsletter, but SubStack is completely free. But I can charge my readers to subscribe to higher-tiered content. A lot of writers will write a free newsletter and then say, pay to subscribe to also get the podcast, and then SubStack just takes 10% of that. So it's really nice because you can do podcasting, and they just announced they're going to do video as well. So now you'll be able to get all of it. Joanna: I know I'm asking a lot of what might seem basic questions, but how does it match with Patreon then? Because I use Patreon for my podcast and for some extra content. And as you talked about the beginning, that is a subscription, creative economy, monthly income from wonderful people listening who support the show. How is SubStack different to Patreon? Elle: They're very similar. I actually got both a Patreon and a SubStack when I first started because I wanted to test both out and just see what the feature differences were. And basically what I determined was that Patreon is great in a lot of ways, but SubStack is very specific for writers. Whereas Patreon is for everyone, writers, musicians, and game makers, like anything you can think of can live on Patreon. There were a lot of like little things that I just felt weren't ideal for writing. For example, my SubStack lives on this website that is hosted on SubStack, and so people get there from Google. I get a lot of people from Google. I get a lot of people from everywhere because people can share the article as if it's like an article in a news website. So I felt it was a little bit more ideal for writers in terms of sharing content more widely. You don't go to Patreons' website and browse around trying to look for Patreons to follow. You'd have to be following somebody on some social media platform and then they tell you come look check out my Patreon, because I was like, how would you get there? Whereas SubStack, you can browse around and look for all the other SubStacks, because you want to read writers and find writers to follow. The benefit that Patreon has over SubStack is they allow you to have multiple pricing tiers. SubStack just allows you to have two. You can have a monthly and annual, and then a founding member tier, which is the higher level tier. Joanna: I see that SubStack has better SEO, search engine optimization, so better discoverability for words. So that's great. Let's talk about the nonfiction essays, or we could call them blog posts or articles that you have. So how has that gone? What have you learned from a year of SubStack? How is the income fitting into your business? Elle: It's interesting because when I initially started, I announced that I was going to write my newsletter for free, which means newsletters just nonfiction, it's basically me documenting my journey of getting published. And then I was going to charge if you want to join to read my book, then you can pay $10 a month or $50 a year. But what I found after a year, and I'm halfway through serializing my book now, I sent out a survey to everyone that was my paid subscribers, asking how they were liking it and everything. And not a single one of them subscribed because they wanted to read my book. Every single one of them had subscribed because they wanted to support my newsletter. So I decided to change tactics, and I decided, okay, I'm going to start charging for some of the things I offer on my newsletter and allow my fiction to be free. And so far, that has gotten a lot better. I think people are very used to getting fiction for free. And even some of the case studies I relied on early on like Alexander Dumas who serialized The Count of Monte Cristo in a newspaper, people were paying to subscribe to the newsletter, but they weren't paying to subscribe to The Count of Monte Cristo. That was just part of the newspaper. So I just figured I might as well start trying to think about it like that, where the fiction is not necessarily how I'm making money, the nonfiction is, and is more easily monetizable but the fiction is available to anyone who wants to read it. I think you take a very similar approach. It seems like you're monetized through all of your nonfiction work, and that supports your fiction work. Is that true? Joanna: I'd say it's probably this point about 25%. I make a pretty good income as a fiction writer as well. I make a lot more than most fiction writers. But then I've got 20 books or something now as a fiction writer. And I've been doing fiction for over a decade as well. I definitely have almost two separate businesses. But I don't use any serialization with my books at all. That's to do with long-running series, with boxsets, with different formats, a lot of different sites. [More on my business model in How to Make a Living with your Writing Third Edition.] Also, I think it's like you said, people might not be so used to reading serialized fiction on SubStack. I wonder how Salman Rushdie is doing it? Elle: Not great, it looks like. Joanna: No, exactly, but I bet you they paid him some money upfront for that. It's not like he has to rely on the subscription, he would have got paid upfront. People who want to serialize fiction are going to sites like Radish or Kindle Vella, or Wattpad, places like that. So I can see how it's difficult to do that on SubStack. Let's come to one of the articles you wrote recently, you said, ‘Do I even want to write another book, or should I write something that will get read instead?' Can you talk a bit about that? [Original article here.] Elle: I have limited time, I have a day job in journalism. I've been writing my book on the side of my job for three years, and then I published it this year. And then what was so crazy to me is, as I published my book, and I had maybe 46 people actually read through to the current chapter. And I have 4,200 newsletter subscribers. So I just thought this is so funny; I wrote this thing that took three years of my life, that I worked so hard on and that I personally love, that feels like a personal masterpiece for me. But it's just not read and enjoyed the way that I would love it to be. But my newsletter is just by accident, and it's so strange to me because my newsletter is so easy for me to write. It almost just feels like my own journal. It's like me having all my thoughts about publishing my book, and just about being a novelist and exploring different avenues. So I was just like, ‘Okay, do I want to spend the next three years of my life writing a book that's going to get 46 viewers? Or would it be better use of my time to continue working on my newsletter and maybe one day I'll have 20,000 newsletter subscribers, and I'll feel pretty great about that. And maybe that'll be even earning me a living, and then I can work on my next book and put it out there, and it will have a better chance of success. And I won't need to like rely on it for any kind of income.' Joanna: So essentially what you're saying is you still do want to write books, but you want to build an audience first and a business first, and then potentially write other things that you can put out for free or you can make some money on but they don't have to support you, basically. Elle: Yes. And maybe it's a little bit masochist of me to say that I want to write another book because with all the research I've done in the past year, I mean, even the fact that you are super prolific, you're a super successful, New York Times bestselling author and the fact that those are only making up 25% of your income it's kind of proof, right? Joanna: Completely. Elle: It's proof that we're not just going to be novelists for a living. Maybe you could be, and there are a couple of people that are, but when I was doing my research, I looked up, I went through all the data for 2020. I was so excited to get access to the data from Bookstat, Paul Abbassi was so gracious, he's the owner, gave me access to all of the 2020 data on book sales. I was wading through that, and I was like, ‘Wait, only 200 books, 267 books sold more than 100,000 copies in 2020.' And I was like, ‘Two hundred some books of the 2.7 million published and 100,000 copies is not very much.' If you think about how many people view a video on Netflix or on TikTok and people spend three hours a day on video content and only 15 minutes a day on written content. So I was just like, this is a little bit masochist of me to even want to write another book. What's wrong with me? Joanna: I think sometimes the muse will not be denied. And those of us who are drawn to write stories, we can't stop that. I do think for most writers, it isn't about the money and most writers do have a day job. I could say for me at this point, the nonfiction is a day job. I do want to come back on the sales, a lot of the six and seven-figure authors, fiction authors I know, they are in Kindle Unlimited, so pages read is more of a metric than sales. And of course, Paul does great data from Amazon, but I don't know how he integrates pages read. I think that would potentially skew the sales because that 100,000 copies is presumably traditional publishing data. Elle: Yes, it's traditional publishing, audiobooks, and everything on Amazon that's not Kindle Unlimited. Joanna: Okay, so that definitely changes the game. Because as I said, a lot of people have got different income streams. And again, I think these different income streams are so important, as we're talking about. I do want to just mention another, because obviously, I'm one of your subscribers, so I get all your posts. Now, one of them was you sent a list of agents, and you were I don't know if you are now querying agents. Even though you know all of this, are you still going to try and get a traditional publishing deal? Or is that something you've just given up on? Elle: I don't know because, originally, I was thinking, I don't know if I want to go the traditional route, just because a lot of traditional publishers today don't put a lot of marketing behind the books that they purchase. When I've talked to a lot of authors that have done that, a lot of them had regrets. ‘I was so excited to get an agent, and then I was so excited to get a publisher. And then I sold 2,000 copies, and they kept 75% of the profits, and I can't even do anything else with it for 10 years until my contract runs out, or whatever.' They were hoping that they were going to push it harder, or get it into airports and get it everywhere. So I'm a little bit leery, that being said, I think that if you have a book that's a mass market play, maybe that could be a good option, but again, the odds are so slim that you're going to be the success story that I almost feel like self-publishing would be better. I actually want to know more about those Kindle Unlimited stats because I cannot get my hands on any and I'm trying to understand that as well. Because like you said, there are plenty of people being very successful in there. I have recently had a lot of agents that I actually queried two years ago, start following my newsletter and I'm like, what's happening? Do I need to start pitching my books in my newsletter? So that has definitely made me start to think, it's another way to maybe I should figure out a way to play this. Joanna: Publishers and agents want authors with a platform, and you now have a platform. Elle: But because I now have a platform, I'd be better off selling to my list directly then through the publisher. Joanna: Yes, that's the unfortunate truth. Elle: They just want to sell to my own audience. Joanna: That's true. And also because for example, I love the fact you've written some fiction, but I'm one of those people who's following you because I'm interested in your thoughts on publishing. So if you put out a fiction book under this name, I probably won't buy it because I'm interested in the nonfiction stuff. That's actually one of the reasons I started another pen name back in 2014. I split my fiction under another name, J.F. Penn because I wanted to separate my audiences. So that's another interesting potential for you in the future. Have you considered separating your audiences under another pen name? Elle: I'm definitely thinking about that. Because I think, for example, my book is also on Wattpad and Royal Road, and I almost think I would be better off putting my fiction on Wattpad and serializing it there where I'm known for my fiction, and anybody who's following my Wattpad is following me for my fiction. But I include at the bottom of every chapter in Wattpad, ‘Hey, you can subscribe to my newsletter ellegriffin.substack.com', because I do think eventually, not only other people that follow me on SubStack just for my newsletter, but I think there could be people that follow me for my fiction and want the behind the scenes access that I give in my newsletter. So I don't want to split my brands, but maybe just split them, right, the people that come in, just for my fiction, and there might be people that come in for my nonfiction. And either way, I think my newsletter is kind of a ‘well, this is who I am.' Joanna: Who I am, exactly. From my experience, I found an overlap of about 5%. Elle: That's interesting. Joanna: It is. But there you go. Everyone has a different situation. Let's talk about your novel, The Totally True Story of Scott Paul, which you crowdfunded through blockchain platform Mirror. Tell us about that. I think a lot of people listening will never have heard of this platform. Tell us why you choose Mirror and what were you doing with that? Elle: I've been really interested in the whole web 3 crypto, NFT scene just because it has attracted the attention of this techy audience that is somewhat wealthy and are investing in art, basically, all these NFT debuts are art, their graphic design, their hand illustration, and just money is pouring into these things. Millions of dollars being spent on NFTs. This is the first real investment we've seen in art for a long time, maybe even since the Renaissance. People will invest in fine art, maybe for their homes a little bit, but for whatever reason, I think because of its involvement in the tech crowd, NFTs have just attracted this audience of people that are interested in art. And so I've been fascinated watching it and then I started to see these platforms pop up that are not just for graphic design, but for writers. Mirror was kind of the first one, and there's a couple more right now, but neither of them are quite as well followed as Mirror so far. But the idea is interesting. You can basically write an article on the platform, when you publish it, it lives on the blockchain, although that's happening behind the scenes. As a reader, you're just reading the article. And then you can sell that as an NFT and it's as easy as just pressing a button that says mint as NFT, and then you can choose the wallet address of the person you want to give it to. And then they have this crowdfunding feature that's a lot like Kickstarter, where you can just debut something and say, ‘Hey, crowdfund this project,' and it's all via Ethereum. It's like you're investing in a Kickstarter only you're not just making a donation to that person you're investing in that person. You get proceeds if the author does. So what I did was, I debuted a crowdfund on Mirror and I said, I'm going to write a novel that takes place in the metaverse and I'm going to write a new chapter for every 0.25 ETH raised, so it was a serial novel. It was a little experiment. I wrote a tiny little prologue and I put it out there and I wrote it specifically for the crypto tech audience, meaning that chapters were very, very short. They took place in the metaverse and involved a lot of the weird NFT stuff that goes on in the metaverse. The story was very weird, and then I ended up raising… It depends on the day, well how much the ETH is worth but it's like 0.75 ETH, so it's like $2,000 to $4,000. And I actually closed the crowdfund after that because I thought that the story was in a good place to end. I didn't want to keep it open and keep writing new chapters forever. So I decided to close the crowdfund at that point, and I wrote each story minted it on Mirror, and then sold them to the people who invested. Now it's a finished story, and what I'm trying to do is sell it to animation studios, because I think it would make a good South Park episode, for instance. Scott Paul is the main character and it's about his battle with Mormonism in the metaverse, so quirky and very much fits the vibe of a South Park episode. I was like, ‘Well, I'm going to try to sell it as an NFT to an animation studio.' And if I sell it, then all the backers of the project, they own a percentage of the project, so they'll get percentage of their earnings. So it was a very interesting. I think it's kind of early. And I think there was one other book that crowdfunded on Mirror and that was a YA novel called ‘Burn Alpha.' And then there's been a couple of other smaller projects, but what I'm really interested in is some of the bigger platforms are about to get into NFTs and I think there are some fascinating ideas that are going to happen and come out of that, Joanna: I love this. I've done a few shows on NFTs. I feel like a lot of authors don't get it at all…most authors don't get it, and most publishers don't get it either. But I'm like you, I'm very excited about it. What you basically did, there was a kind of royalty fractionalization. And if you do sell it to animation, or South Park or whatever, then as you said, the people who own those NFTs, they bought into your future. So it has that built-in marketing because people want you to be successful, because then they are more successful themselves, which I really like. You mentioned there are bigger platforms. So what are you seeing? Elle: I've been in talks with several platforms that are looking at some very awesome ideas. The one I'm most excited about is a way to monetize fanfiction. So the idea is, imagine you write a story, and it's really good. Let's say it's a vampire lore story, and everybody wants to write fanfiction for it. What you can do as the author is you can say, ‘Here, I've minted the characters of my novel as an NFT, if you want to use them in your book, go right ahead.' So then the fanfiction writers can buy those characters and use them in their own novels, and even sell their own novels with the original author earning royalties on those characters because they're being used in another work. It's this kind of way for the initial author to still get credit for the fanfiction and I think that's really interesting because that's a lot of the reason why authors are against fanfiction is because they're like, ‘Well, then you're taking my work, and then you're being really successful at it and it's my work to start with.' But if you could kind of build that into the process, that would be so cool. Joanna: You're absolutely right. I don't know if you saw the project, I can't remember the name of it now. But last year, so we're talking in March 2022, and as soon as around November 2021, a group of YA authors put up this kind of thing. They got absolutely slammed in social media, and they ended up taking it down. [It was Realms of Ruin.] I feel like people didn't understand what they were trying to do. They got accused of ripping their fans off, and all this type of thing. Do you think the understanding of blockchain and NFTs is moving fast enough in the right direction? Elle: I think that it's hard because definitely if you're into NFTs as a writer, you're an early adopter, so you can't think of your readers the same way. You can't think of the readers of an NFT project being the people who read your fiction novels, for example. They're going to be a tech dominant kind of person that already knows about NFTs and crypto and is well versed in that. Anytime you debut the idea, and then share it with maybe a general public who isn't as knowledgeable about it, they might see it differently. A lot of people right now think about NFTs – they'll call them MLMs, or they don't understand. I think there's a lack of understanding about how they actually work and how they benefit the original creator and the people that are investing. But I think as that starts to become more clear, that won't happen like that situation that happened. I think it needed a little bit more communication around it in what they were doing, but they also probably needed to target an audience that may be better understood, and I think the audience is better understanding like every month. Eventually I think, once we're using Venmo and stuff to swap crypto back and forth, it'll be like a no-brainer, something that we're not even really thinking about. It's just the fact that it exists in this techie space and a lot of the platforms are hard to use right now, that makes it hard to understand. It would be like trying to get somebody to use the internet in 1996, but nobody knows what the internet is. So you're trying to send an email with like MS DOS, and it just seems really complicated, and you're like, why would I ever do this? Joanna: I'm glad you used that example because I've said this too to people. I'm like, ‘Look, you don't know how the internet works but you use it. You don't know how PayPal works but you send money that way.' I feel like people are almost annoyed because we're talking about something that is so early, and they're expecting it to be exactly right at the moment. Whereas, of course, it took well, like you just said, like 25 years for us to get to this stage of the internet. I'm thinking it's two to three years away until we really get a lot of more mainstream users, or do you think that might have accelerated due to the pandemic? Elle: I know that there are a couple of platforms that are about to debut this in a big way that will make it more natural. I think maybe you're right, probably two to three years, once that stuff is all rolled out and it becomes so natural, you're not even thinking about it, then it'll be normal. It kind of already is normal if you think about right now, to use Wattpad, you have to buy coins, and then you use coins to unlock chapters of a book. That's kind of how crypto will work; you won't be thinking of it, it's just a coin. Or when you go to Disneyland, you can have Disney bucks or whatever. You use different forms of currency for different things and you're like buying those with US dollars. So I think eventually, that's how it'll be and I think it's very, very close. Joanna: One question, you mentioned 1996. Now, I'm definitely older than you and I actually was part of a millennium bug project, way back. I remember the millennium bug. But what happened to a lot of my friends, who a lot of them worked in companies that then got destroyed in the dotcom when all of that crashed. So a lot of these companies didn't survive and then companies like Amazon, for example, obviously made it through the crash into the mainstream. Now, a lot of people are calling NFTs a bubble right now and of course, we've already had a drop in the value of some of the cryptocurrencies and, obviously, the world right now is difficult. Do you think we're heading for an NFT crash or do you think that it just is starting? Elle: I think that there are a lot of startups in this space right now. And there's going to be one or two of them that we're still using five years from now, and the rest are going to be gone. There's a lot of players vying for this space and trying to make it something but right now we all use Venmo to transfer money back and forth to each other that's kind of stuck around. I think there'll be eventually some like one or two things that we start using as part of our day to day lives, but most of it won't survive, for sure. All of this right now is like a big playground or a sandbox, where we're testing out a lot of ideas and seeing what works. And there's a lot of excitement around NFTs, but yeah, some of the NFT projects are totally stupid and like why would you buy them? When the stock market crashes, and nobody has jobs, are you really going to be happy that you have a picture of an ape on your phone? That's probably not going to make a big difference to you. But I think that the ultimate, what NFTs stand for, as we start to figure out like what makes an NFT valuable, some of those things will stay. For example, The Bored Ape Yacht Club is not a picture of an ape on your phone, it's a $20,000 admission into a millionaire's club where if you have a business idea or you're a startup and you're trying to get investors, it's probably a good idea to buy a bored ape so you can get into the Yacht Club and have access to those people who could invest in your business. So I think determining what will make an NFT valuable in the future, once we figure that out, those will be the things that have staying power, and the rest will kind of just go away. Joanna: You sound like a realist in that you assess data and you're like, ‘This isn't working, I'm going to do something else,' and less emotionally attached to some of your projects but I feel like you're also adventurous in your tech. And many people listening are afraid. They are actually afraid that the current business model is going away, that everyone's still struggling with monetizing themselves on Kindle and Facebook, let alone all these new platforms. How can people change their attitude to look to the next decade with more excitement than fear? Elle: I think that is so fascinating. I feel like this is especially to writers, and I'm not really sure why because I think it's because there's like a certain prestige to writing novels. But if you're a writer at all, you grew up thinking like one day I want to write a book and that feels like the pinnacle or apex of your career as a writer. The book format has changed so much over the years, and it's weird to me that we're still holding on to it today when it's one of the least read mediums you can use in your toolbox. If I think about would Victor Hugo use TikTok, or would he use Twitter today? Absolutely. Victor Hugo was like a political scion, he would for sure be on Twitter every day. Would Alexander Dumas use SubStack? I definitely think he would be because he published his book as a serial in the newspaper. And back then people made fun of him and said he wasn't the literary sort. He was just a commercial fiction writer, like selling out for the money. Yet for some reason, I think, because the book has retained some level of prestige. It's still what writers really want to strive for, but if you actually look about at where people are spending their time, they're just not spending their time reading a book on Kindle, or reading a book from the library. I read some stat recently that was something about even if you buy a book, it's not a guarantee it's going to be read. A lot of people are aspirational book buyers, meaning they just buy them and put them on their shelf and never read them. And so it's just, like, well, where will your writing be read then, where will your writing have the best chance of being read? Right now I think that SubStack, I think it's medium to some extent, they're starting to be vocal. There's Wattpad, there's Railroad, there's Tapas, and Radish. Go where the people are reading and then publish for that format. There's nothing wrong in making your novel a digital novel or publishing it as a serial, there's so many ways to publish your novel, why not publish it in a way that will be successful? Joanna: Brilliant. I love your SubStack, I think it's fantastic. Tell people where they can find you and everything you do online. Elle: It's ellegriffin.substack.com. All my stuff's there. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Elle. That was great. Elle: Thank you so much.The post Different Ways Of Publishing Through Substack And NFTs With Elle Griffin first appeared on The Creative Penn.

I've spent the last 15 years building an author business on Web 2 — digital publishing, blogging and podcasting, social media, and more. But as Web 3 begins to emerge through blockchain, NFTs, AI, and the metaverse, I want to make sure I still have a thriving business over the next 15 years. NFTs are an important part of the future business model in the Creator Economy and in this presentation, I explain why they're important and how authors can consider using them. In the intro, I give an update on my first couple of NFTs, minted on OpenSea, the potential impact of President Biden's blockchain and crypto Executive Order [The Verge]; In the main section, I go through: Who am I, and why am I talking about NFTs? My technical background and how I've embraced technology early in my author career so farWhat is an NFT?Different blockchains — and energy requirementsWhy do we need NFTs? Ownership and resale; flexing in the metaverse, and erosion of royalties + paid ads + inflation = we need more income streams from our IPSix different types of NFTs that authors can consider, and how they are being used in other industriesWhy digital scarcity enables more creativity and collaborationHow smart contracts enable easier collaboration and a simplified payment systemHow blockchain and smart contracts (and DAOs) could change royalty payments, estate management, and moreWhat we need in an NFT solution for publishingHow do NFTs fit into the current business model? What is a potential future state once the technology goes mainstream?What action should you take right now? You can find more resources at thecreativepenn.com/future For a broader look at web 3 and emerging technologies, check out my book, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds: The Impact of Converging Technologies on Authors and the Publishing Industry.  If you have any comments, tweet me @thecreativepenn or leave a comment under the video or on the post. Thanks again to my patrons who sponsor these futurist episodes, and if you find them useful, you can support the show at patreon.com/thecreativepenn and get the monthly Q&A coming soon for March.  Or if you don’t want to commit for a monthly payment. you can also buy me a coffee or two at BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn  Transcript of the introduction I put the main section out as a video on YouTube and on the blog, but I know many of you prefer audio only — I do too! So I wanted to put it out on the audio feed as well, but I also have an extra section upfront, an update — as I mentioned on Monday’s show, I minted my first NFT on Opensea, and it sold immediately, so I minted another one, which also sold immediately! I wanted to talk briefly about this before playing the presentation as things move on apace. First of all, the book-specific NFT platforms aren’t ready quite yet, although many are almost there, so I decided to mint some of my AI generative art, which I’ve been playing with for a while.  This is not out of the blue for me. My family are primarily visual artists. My dad’s a printmaker, one brother is a photographer, my other brother is a 3D fashion designer, and one of my sisters designs textiles and interiors for superyachts. We are indeed The Creative Penns!  I already dabble in visual art. I take thousands of photos during my research trips (some of which I share on Instagram @jfpennauthor ). My fiction is very visual and sense of place is important to me, as you can also discover through my Books and Travel Podcast. For my AI generative art, I’m using my own photos of places combined with words from the books about that place, and then remixing those images and curating until I find one that resonates with me.  Of course, art is subjective, but since I’m the writer and the photographer, I can curate the output based on many iterations of AI images. I love love love playing with generative art. It is so much fun! On 11 March 2022, I made my first NFT, Rain soaked the ashes of the dead, by combining one of my pictures from the burning ghats of Varanasi, India, which inspired the first scene of my first novel, Pentecost (later republished as Stone of Fire) with a prompt of the first line. “Rain soaked the ashes of the dead into the winding Varanasi streets as rivers of mud ran down to the holy river Ganges.” The image is the NFT, and the special edition of the ebook of Stone of Fire is ‘unlockable content.' There is a smart contract attached to it that says I get 5% on any resale.  I used OpenSea as it's known as ‘the Amazon of NFTs,’ and it has an Art category. I chose the Polygon blockchain, which is less energy-intensive than Ethereum, but OpenSea still prices in ETH. I couldn’t use an auction for this setup so I just priced at 0.1ETH (around US$250 at the time of minting). The first NFT was bought quickly, so I made another one, Inscribed in an ancient hand, from a picture of the Radcliffe Camera, part of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and another line from Stone of Fire. “The names of each School were written above the wooden portals, inscribed in an ancient hand, gold-leafed and stamped into thick oak, banded with copper.” It was also bought almost immediately, which is encouraging!  These NFTs are art, rather than books. A special edition of the ebook of Stone of Fire is included in the Unlockable Content, but that is not the NFT itself. I have plans for lots of different types of NFTs, some of which I’ll talk about in the presentation ahead. They include a video of me writing my novella, Tomb of Relics, with GPT-3 tool, Sudowrite, and also PDF scans of my drafts, and of course, special NFT editions of my books, which will be limited edition but not unique.  These first generative art NFTs are unique. They are 1 of 1s, and I’m experiencing surprising feelings that I didn’t expect and that go some way to explaining the interest in this space. I have never created something that is a 1 of 1 before. When we write books and publish them, we expect to sell many copies of the same thing. Each book is interchangeable, or fungible. When I minted these first NFTs — non-fungible tokens — they were in my wallet on OpenSea. I owned them. But when I listed them for sale, and they sold, they disappeared from my wallet and exist now in other people’s wallets. I don’t own those images anymore.  Even though I have been thinking a lot about this, the experience of the NFT disappearing out of my wallet clicked something in my mind around what ownership truly means in the digital realm. It is special to own something unique, and I feel almost sad to know that I don’t own that anymore. In fact, I have a few images that I love so much that I might mint them, but not list them for sale. I want to keep them, but I can also see that as an NFT artist, I want to have them displayed on my profile. You can find my NFTs on opensea.io/jfpenn and more detail at jfpenn.com/nfts  Of course, there is so much that I want to do — and that is part of the creativity section of the presentation coming up.  If you want to play with AI generative art, I mentioned WomboDream on the podcast a while back, and because I use Sudowrite, I got access to their Sudomake.art beta. I love that I can use my own words and my own images, combined with AI, to make something new. I also think it's easier to understand how AI prompting works with a medium you don't excel in already.  I also cover a lesson AI generative art in The AI-Assisted Author (50% off, so it's under $100, if you use coupon MARCH22 until 31 March!) If you are still doubtful about NFTs and blockchain as an emerging economy, remember that President Biden signed an Executive Order on blockchain and crypto last week.  The Verge reports “the order legitimizes digital assets by treating them as worthy of measured regulation,” “instructs agencies to develop policies that will protect consumers, investors, and businesses, as well as to guard against systemic risks,” and “it also directs the Department of Commerce to figure out how to keep the US competitive in the development of digital assets.” The days of wild west crypto will recede and with regulation, we’ll see the development of a lot more platforms that are more easily used by more people. It’s essentially the beginning of web 3 going mainstream. You may not even know that the platforms you use in the future use blockchain architecture, you’ll just use it.  If you want to get into this space now, you are still early, but there is no need to do anything. You can just wait and watch and see what emerges. I shall be a crash test dummy as ever, and no doubt make mistakes along the way, but hey, I just can’t help myself! Thanks again to my patrons who sponsor these futurist episodes, and if you find them useful, you can support the show at patreon.com/thecreativepenn and get the monthly Q&A coming soon for March.  Or if you don’t want to commit for a monthly payment. you can also buy me a coffee or two at BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn  Transcript of the presentation Hello, Creatives. I'm Joanna Penn, and this is a presentation on NFTs for Authors: Creativity, Collaboration, Community, and Cash.' So, first of all, who am I and why am I talking about NFTs? I spent 13 years as a business consultant, implementing financial systems for consultancies like Accenture, Capgemini, and other firms in Europe and Asia-Pacific. And so, I have a background in technology, although I was never a programmer. I started writing for publication in 2006 and started self-publishing in 2008 (see my timeline here). As a businesswoman, I embraced digital publishing, ebooks, and all of that, before it really became mainstream. I was able to leave my consulting job in 2011. So, I've been a full-time creative entrepreneur running my own business for over a decade. In terms of other technology, in 2009, I started The Creative Penn Podcast, well before podcasting went mainstream. It's now had over 6.5 million downloads in over 200 countries. And it is one of the longest-running podcasts for writers and creatives with over 600 episodes. I tend to embrace technology reasonably early, certainly not the earliest to adopt but, you know, reasonably early. So, over the last decade, I've built a multi-six-figure business basically as an individual author. I work with freelancers but I'm, you know, what one could call, ‘a solopreneur.' I've built this business on what is known as Web 2.0 — the internet as we know it right now. What I can see ahead are changes to my business model. So, this is an entirely selfish endeavor to try and protect my business as we move into Web 3.0! And as I learn things, I like to share them with my community. So, really I'm looking at NFTs and blockchain as the architecture of what may become my business model in the next decade. And certainly, I'm in my late 40s and I really want to be doing this business for the rest of my life. And, inevitably, businesses change. SOME OF MY FICTION AS J.F. PENN In terms of my writing, I'm an award-nominated New York Times and USA Today best-selling thriller author, as J.F. Penn, and I write non-fiction for authors under Joanna Penn. I've got around 35 books and I've sold nearly a million books across 162 countries and 5 languages. I'm also an award-winning podcaster and creative entrepreneur and I'm an international professional speaker. I'm a futurist and I'm very interested in how these technologies will change things in the next decade. What is an NFT? Well, just in terms of a definition, NFT stands for non-fungible token, which, let's face it, is a terrible acronym! It's defined in this book, The NFT Handbook by Matt Fortnow and QuHarrison Terry, which is a really good introduction, as “unique digital collectibles secured by the blockchain.” And also an NFT provides “authenticity of origin, ownership uniqueness, scarcity, and permanence for any particular item.” There are a lot of interesting things within this, and we'll explore various parts of these terms as we go through. But just for now, think about it as a collectible. And since we're authors and rights holders, it's really thinking about, well, the equivalent of a physical collectible, so, a special limited edition hardback with a lovely leather cover with gold embossing hand created by the author, that would be a physical collectible. And we're talking here about digital collectibles, and we'll go into more detail. But what is dramatically different from a physical, collectible book is that NFTs can be programmed with a smart contract. So, this is where things become very interesting, because smart contracts allow for automated transactions without manual processing. When I mint a NFT, and ‘mint' on the blockchain is, essentially, publishing it, publishing this edition on a blockchain, I can put a smart contract with it which says things like terms of the license, the use of that intellectual property, the resale percentage, the ownership, and much more. And I'll come back to all of these things, but that's what is truly different. It is, essentially, a digital product but it can be programmed. So, it gives it so many more possibilities for functionality but also for payments. And, as authors and rights holders, we are very interested in making more money from our intellectual property! So, just to come back to the phrase ‘minted on a blockchain.' And, of course, this area is full of different language, but so is every area of publishing, there's always different language, so, try not to get too bogged down in the language, just accept that there's always another language. So, minting is, essentially, publishing on a blockchain. You don't have to understand blockchain in order to use it. I'm sure you don't understand the https protocol for using the internet. You can send money on PayPal without understanding how that works. And this is the same. You don't need to understand the technology of blockchain to think about using it. But the point is there are different blockchains and they have different functionality and energy usage. And, of course, this is one of the issues that people have with NFTs at the moment, as I record this in the late days of February, 2022. And it's very important to time and date stamp this actually because things will change. But I will direct you to a site called cleannfts.org where they list out what are the different eco-friendly blockchains. So, when people say, ‘Oh, the blockchains will destroy the planet,' there are different uses on different blockchains. Here's an example from the Flow blockchain, which is fascinating, it says, ‘1 minute in a hot shower is 382,000 Flow NFTs,' so, and, ‘1 mile in a car is a million Flow NFTs.' So, when people say, ‘Oh, you're destroying the planet with creating NFTs,' well, compare that to some of the other things that you probably do every day. Or here, ‘1 Google search equals 12.5 Flow NFTs.' So, have a think about that. And if you're going to look at doing NFTs yourself, then consider an eco-friendly blockchain. Now, personally, I think that they will all become eco-friendly, it's just a matter of time because this is a problem that people in the NFT and blockchain community absolutely want to solve. Why do we need NFTs? Don't we have a perfectly good publishing system already? So, you might be thinking, ‘Well, why do we even need NFTs? We have a perfectly good publishing system already. Why do we need to go into this?' Well, there are a few reasons. First of all, ownership and resale of digital products. This is something that many readers don't even understand, but readers do not own digital files in the current ecosystem. If they read on Amazon Kindle, if they read on Apple devices, or they listen on Audible or some of the other platforms, these services, these companies can remove access at any time. And indeed, we've seen this. If a customer has their account removed, the person loses access to all those things. Essentially, a reader has paid for something they do not own, they have a license to read it but they don't own it, they can't resell it like they could a physical book. And NFTs make it truly possible to own this copy of the book and resell those digital products. This resale market for NFTs is something I'll come back to because I think it's really amazing. With smart contracts and resale, it means money coming down the pipe for many many years into the future. And let's face it, we all like automated income streams! And this will allow it. The second thing is flexing your bookshelf in the metaverse. So, yes, sorry, more jargon, but people increasingly live inside digital realms. And I'm sure you've been aware of the news around metaverse and the different places that people will gather virtually. I don't believe there will be any single system. There won't be ‘the' metaverse in the same way there won't be ‘the' internet — it is lots of different places. NFTs are being used to flex identity, or show what kind of person you are, in the metaverse. And this terminology is kind of the reason why I have my books behind me is I'm showing you what type of person I am. And that's the same reason why people put a particular NFT as their avatar on Twitter or they, you know, might carry a particular brand or wear a particular brand. It says something about you as a person in the way you dress, in the things that you carry, in the way you portray yourself. And we know that branding is super important. Now, art, music, gaming fans are already flexing their NFTs online and in the metaverse. And so, publishing has to catch up because book lovers, bibliophiles, people like us, we love our books. If I walk into someone's house, the first thing I do is look at their bookshelf, and I'm sure you do too. That's the type of people we are. So, when I think about the future…and again, not right now but in the next couple of years, 5 years, 10 years, if I do this presentation in a metaverse space, then I'll want to do it in a space where I'm surrounded by my books. And that may be using NFTs, which will be, essentially, original digital products that I've bought to display what I think is important in the metaverse. So, both of those are really from the reader perspective, from the end-user perspective. In terms of authors and rights holders, digital income and author royalties are being eroded. Now, in the same way as we've seen in the music industry, what's happened with streaming over the last few years, streaming and subscription models, is that, while the cost of creating the original product is still the same, we then have to, essentially, get lower payments for our books when they're borrowed, when they're checked out. These are micropayments, payments essentially per stream, per subscription, per page read, per listen, whatever they will end up being. And this isn't going to stop because, from a reader and a listener perspective, from my perspective as a reader and a listener, subscription models are incredibly good value. So, they're not going away. In fact, they'll probably increase. [More on subscription models for audio in particular in my Advanced Salon discussion with Orna Ross (Feb 2022)] So, while subscription and streaming have increased the audience for our work, they've also eroded the royalties. And this is why the music industry has jumped headfirst into NFTs because they're a couple of years ahead of us and they've seen the erosion of income through micropayments and, so, they're looking at different ways to make more money from intellectual property. Now, at the same time, we've had erosion of royalties, we've also had the rise in paid advertising, which eats into profits at the same time and has become basically non-negotiable for authors, publishers, rights holders in order to get our work in front of readers and listeners. So, while we've got, you know, income coming down and ad costs going up, both of these things are squeezing the income streams. Also, we've got inflation and most of the prices have not risen in line with inflation. So, the money we are getting is worth less over time. And with caps on the price of digital products, we need something new. So, basically, authors and rights holders need to make more income and readers want to own digital products, resell digital products, and support the creators they love. What are the different types of NFTs? Right, let's get into the different types of NFTs for authors. And these are just some that I've come up with based on the other things going on in the blockchain space. But I'm recording this at the end of February, 2022, and it's very likely that other things will emerge over time. But this is a good start. (A) The NFT ebook or audiobook Now, this is, essentially, the same product as we already publish on the other stores but the difference is that, by publishing on blockchain as NFTs, these can be bought and owned and resold and the smart contract will distribute money to the authors and rights holders and whoever else you put in the smart contract as part of the ecosystem. There might be digital extras within these. It might be a limited edition here, for example, one of 5,000 might be the particular run. But the important thing here is the ownership and the resale and the smart contract. (B) The NFT special edition I'm calling this my one-of-one. And here's an example, this is my first novel, ‘Stone of Fire,' with an AI-generated piece of art, which I love and actually I'm keeping as my own NFT, but it's really important to think about how we can create things that will surprise and delight readers that they might be really interested in. So, also, for example, I'm thinking of putting my entire hand-edited draft into an NFT, and that might be interesting to both readers, but also for authors to see behind the scenes on a manuscript. I'd certainly be interested in owning that from Stephen King or someone like that. You can see the value. I'm also considering doing videos that might go with these but, essentially, they are special editions in the same way that you might do a perfectly hand-tooled print edition. This is a special digital edition. And I like the idea of one-of-one. Some people are doing 1 of 10. And obviously, there'll be different price differentials on that but a true one-of-one, essentially, is an equivalent to the pieces of art that we're seeing in the world. So, when you consider what you might do for NFTs, it's interesting to start thinking of what you might do for these one-of-one products that will be truly special, that will be interesting to both the readers and the fans and also the whole community that's built up. (C) NFT community token, also potentially known as membership This can give access into special channels. So, Discord is being used because it's, essentially, linked to NFT tokens so you can give special access. Maybe it's a readers group, maybe it is a group of genre authors joining together, maybe it's a coaching add-on to your non-fiction book, maybe…well, there's just so many things that you could possibly do with this. This may, potentially, replace membership websites because tokens are much more easily used as access. So, this will enable authors, publishers, rightsholders, genre communities, author organizations to create spaces where people can buy access but then the buyer can also, potentially, sell their token on. Of course, you don't have to allow resale, that's just one of the possibilities. The idea with a smart contract is that you can put whatever you like in it, which is the power of it. So the NFT community token is interesting because a lot of people want to pay for access. Again, I mentioned Stephen King, one of my favorite authors, I would definitely be buying a community token for Stephen King to get on video once a month and talk about his writing process. Now, these are some of the more developed aspects that we're seeing in the music industry. (D) NFT ticket for a physical event or it can, obviously, be an online event These are actually limited-time tokens that allow access into that event rather than that sort of membership ongoing thing. The ticketing industry is totally enamored with this because in sports, people resell tickets outside stadiums and the original rights holders, the people who own the rights to that basketball team or whatever, they're not getting any extra money from resale. What NFT tickets allow is a percentage of resale of a ticket to go to the original rights holders. So, in terms of authors, this could be book launch events. This could be, again, a group of authors getting together and doing an event and selling NFT tickets. And then the NFT can be used to, they call it, ‘airdrop,' which is, essentially, a new piece of content will arrive into the token holder's wallet. And that may be the book for the evening, for example, or that may be a recording of a presentation. So, the ticket idea, it's unique and it expires. So, it might be able to be resold up to the point of the event and then it might be cut off or, if it's some truly awesome event, it might also have resale value after the fact if it includes all of that extra content. There are so many possibilities with these, and I just want to scratch the surface with this. (E) NFTs for royalty fractionalization This is already happening in the music space, royal.io has enabled the rapper Nas to fractionalize the royalties on his streaming. So, they must have worked out a way to publish through a blockchain with a smart contract involved and then you can buy an NFT — well, you can't now because they all sold out — but other artists are starting to do this, you buy an NFT and you get a percentage of those streaming royalties. So, it's essentially a form of crowdfunding, but also has a form of ownership. So, as a fan, I can own 0.001% or whatever percent of this song or these songs or this album or this book and then I receive money into my wallet as other people stream it. I love this idea because it bakes in marketing. If you are a fan of Nas, or a fan of Stephen King, if you buy a fractionalization of that book, then you are totally incentivized to go and market that song, book, whatever. You're going to encourage your friends to read it and download it and you're going to just have built-in marketing for the people who've, essentially, bought into the future of this product. So, this is a very interesting model. It is entirely dependent on being able to automate the publication and streaming and royalties, which is what blockchain offers. And I will come back to that for my future state of publishing later. But I think this model could be fascinating for those authors who have created a fan base and who want to do something very interesting with their book without the overheads of manually distributing tiny, tiny, micropayments to all of those fans. (6) NFTs for intellectual property rights and co-creation So, what we're starting to see is NFTs in collections around a digital world. That might be actually built in a metaverse place, but it might also just be for publishing other books or songs or whatever. So, essentially, you buy an NFT, and then that gives you the IP rights to use the content of that NFT in creating more products. So, we've seen this with some of the famous art NFTs where people have got the rights to turn that into merchandise, so, say, T-shirts with that image on. Now, in the past, this has not really been possible, you've had to do licensing agreements. But what this NFT enables is, essentially, to set it up in advance. So, you've created a smart contract that, essentially, gives the rights to the rights holder to do certain things. And it's a contract, so, it actually has it all up front. Now, most NFTs don't include the right to do that. They're just another copy, but this NFT type is, essentially, almost a co-creation. Now, I would equate it to what Kindle Worlds did a few years back, which was an author created a world, fiction world, and then other authors were allowed to write in that world and use characters within that world because the Kindle World's contract allowed them to do that. And this is how I see the NFTs for IP rights could look like in the future. And there are jobs in the metaverse called ‘lore master,' people who are creating these narratives around digital worlds in gaming etc, and different NFT products so that people can then go and use them to do other things. [More on this model in The Ownership Economy: Business Models Around NFTs with Jessica Artemisia] And again, it's a way of expanding your brand, it's a way of creating other products, it's a way of buying in with the community so that we can all profit together. It's a very interesting model. Creativity, Collaboration, Community, and Cash So, these are the four areas that I think are interesting, creativity, collaboration, community, and cash. So, first of all, creativity. Since getting into this NFT space, I've come up with literally hundreds of ideas for NFT s around my IP. So, I have around 35 books at the moment, fiction and non-fiction, and I have ideas for all of them. This example, ‘A Thousand Fiendish Angels,' which was is based around Dante's Inferno and features a book of human skin (I just can't help myself!) but I've come up with lots of ideas just for this. And this is a trilogy of short stories, essentially a short-story collection, which I can think of absolutely tons of ideas for NFTs. That's just one book. So, when you get into this, the creativity sparks start going and you start realizing what the possibilities are. So, it's turning our digital intellectual property into so much more. And of course, it's cheaper to create digital products but that doesn't mean they're worth less. If we have true digital scarcity, we can create awesome, surprising, delightful, wonderful products that people are interested in. We can also use video and audio to add to our ebooks and enhance these products and we can do stand-alone NFTs. So, for example, I do a lot of podcasting and I have a lot of private conversations with creatives that, potentially, we could collaborate in turning those into NFTs. I'm certainly interested in, you know, listening into a conversation by two writers I love and, you know, buying a token for access to that. So, there are lots of ways we can create these one-off products, as well as the products based off our IP. I also love the potential of commissioning art for different aspects of the books. Or also using AI art generation. There are some really interesting tools for using words to create art now. You can take a passage from a book and generate an original art piece from it, and that can become the token with the text. There are also lots of ways to collaborate with authors and other creators through NFTs. And this has been traditionally very difficult. So, this is an example of a book. I co-wrote with my friend J. Thorn, Risen Gods, it's set in New Zealand, it's, again, got a lot of visual stuff we could do with it. But J. and I, we have a co-writing contract, we published this about 5 years ago, and I published it under my company. And I have to pay J. every month or every quarter. Essentially, I have to go through all the reports, I have to figure out how much I owe him, I have to send the money. It's all manual. And this is what's done across the publishing industry. Obviously, there are a lot of systems, but they're all diverse systems. There's a lot of paperwork and manual work around collaboration. Now, there are beginning to be things you can do with ebooks. So, Draft2Digital, for example, includes payment splitting. But if you want to do 100 authors in a anthology, for example, it's a lot of work to set that up and then to do all the different products. And you still have to do something manually, you can't necessarily do it all through one system. So, what blockchain allows and NFTs will allow is you can set up the smart contract to automatically split the payments, the micropayments over time. And also you could include a percentage for an editor, you can include a percentage for a cover designer, there will be freelancers who really want to collaborate with prolific artists, authors. And this will enable much more interesting collaborations between people because it's so easy to do. Community is incredibly important. It's incredibly important right now, and it always has been. Having a community is a way to reach readers with your work, it's a way to support the artist community, it helps your mental health. I mean there's a lot of things that community is important for. And community is even more important as we move into Web 3. So, community tokens, as I talked about, will enable access to different levels within an online community. This might replace membership software, this might also help author collectives, genre collectives, but also organizations like ‘The Society of Authors' or ‘The Alliance of Independent Authors' or I'm a member of International Thriller Writers. These types of tokens could actually change the access model and get rid of a lot of the manual work in the back end, which is, ‘Oh, this person hasn't paid their dues,' or, ‘this person has changed their level,' or whatever. What we can also see, and again, sorry to bring in more language, but the rise of DAOs or ‘decentralized autonomous organizations.' These are very exciting, this is essentially a way to automate a type of company. It's difficult to go into it without too much technical detail but, essentially, it will be a more automated way of running things on a higher level. [For more check out this Coin Telegraph article on DAOs.] DAOs will allow authors to have controlling stakes in these types of societies and organizations or it will enable publishing and estate management with much more automation. In my head, I see that as the future of my own company is that it becomes a decentralized company with everything automated in the back end. I am a one-person company right now, this would help me a lot. But it would also reduce back-end costs for groups of authors, rights holders, publishing companies. And let's face it, everyone wants to reduce their costs. And then, finally, cash. We are artists but we also want to earn some money from our work. And this is the basis of having a business and a thriving publishing community. We do need there to be money involved. Yes, we love this, but we also run businesses. Now, what true digital scarcity allows, and that's why I like the one-of-one ideas, but there's so many ways to bring in new streams of income with NFTs, I hope you can see that with some of the examples that I've given, but also resale. Again, in my mind, resale is very, very exciting. So, let's say I do an NFT and I make $500 on the initial sale. Well, then, let's say, something happens. I win a prize or I hit the top of a list and the value of my IP goes up. So, maybe that holder then sells it for…let's say, you sell it for $1,000. And then, out of that $1,000, I might get the 20% or 10%. So, let's say I get another 10%, let's say I get $100 from that. And then, over the years, as the NFT is resold and resold, I keep getting a percentage stream from that resale automatically. Now, this has never happened before. There are some attempts to make the resale of second-hand books work this way but, of course, it's not automated, and it's tiny. Whereas this has potential for massive scale at an automated level. So, it truly is very exciting. When I think about resale of digital books and products and audio, I can't get more excited about it because it really is revolutionary. As an individual one-person business, everything I do is designed to be scalable. I don't want to have to touch things a second time. I want to put things out there and then just have money coming in. And that's what I love about the digital business. But this makes it even better. So, when you think about resale and digital scarcity, consider what resale might mean to you as a rights holder, as an author, as a publisher. Smart contracts and automatic payments mean easier reconciliation, immediate and faster payment. So, instead of waiting months for money, you get it immediately on the transaction. It means the removal of third-party processing costs. I mean, of course, there will always be some kind of like gas fee, which is the platform fee, and there might also be other companies involved. I don't believe this will be truly decentralized, I see that there will always be companies that we use who will take a percentage. So, it's important to look at those companies and how much the percentage is. But it means, as we talked about, easier collaboration, which can, potentially, expand the number of products without expanding the back-end pain of figuring out how to pay people for that. The author is also incentivized to create more for the long term. So, I am always thinking about my long-term business, my long-term sustainable income. What happened when I had Covid last year, I couldn't work but the money still came in because I've set it all up that way. Now, I like the idea that, as I create more and the value of my intellectual property rises, which, inevitably, it does, generally, unless something really awful happens, but even then we found bad publicity can cause authors work to sell more. So, what we can think about is how the value of an author's IP will rise over time and how that might affect the value of their NFTs. Some musicians are doing their own creator coins that might be something that big-name authors will be interested in, in the future. And then, of course, licensing for other rights might also spin off into the value of other NFTs, which, again, brings in more money. So, to me, this is expanding the possible streams of income. And that is very exciting. What do we want in a NFT solution for publishing? I've been looking into the various companies and these are, essentially, the things that I want and I think we need in a blockchain solution. So, first of all, low-fee minting or low-gas-fees minting on an environmentally-friendly blockchain. This is really important. Readers care about this, authors care about this, everyone cares about this. We don't want to destroy the planet so we need the blockchain that a solution uses to be an environmentally-friendly blockchain or at least a very low-energy blockchain. Plus, this will encourage resale because, obviously, every time you resell, there's another transaction, which costs more energy. So, we definitely do want this environmentally-friendly blockchain idea. The next thing is ease of use for readers, collectors, fans, and community, as well as creators. So, I need it to be easy when I mint my own NFTs, but the reader and the collectors need to find it easy too. Now, at the moment, it is difficult for people who are not blockchain/NFT/crypto people to deal with NFTs, and that's because the technological solutions are designed for people who already know what they're doing. And we can't have that for a mainstream solution. It needs to be easy. So, it must be as easy as, at the moment, using something like Amazon to get an ebook or Audible to get an audiobook or PayPal to pay. And so, we're definitely looking for these easier-to-use solutions, which, at the moment, I haven't seen emerge. We also need the ability to change the terms of the smart contract. So, some solutions will have a standard contract but, as an author and rights holder, and I'm sure most of the publishing companies want to be able to, basically, configure each NFT. So, when I put out a one-of-one NFT, I want to be able to say how long it lasts, what the resale percentage is, if I have other collaborators, and what percentage goes to different people. And, if I want to send the money to different wallets, that might be that I want to send 5% to a charity, for example. It needs to be configurable per NFT mint, essentially. And then also adhering to financial regulations and providing tax documentation. So, this is something that is still up in the air as I record this, again, late February, 2022. The jurisdictional laws and changes around blockchain and NFTs are difficult because, of course, blockchain is a truly international technology. It's even difficult to tell where the buyer is from or where the NFT minter is from. So, these things will have to wash out over time but some of the questions I have right now, for example, are, when I sell an ebook NFT, there's digital sales tax and companies like Amazon and Apple and Kobo, they manage that for me. So, I just get the royalty. But if I sell on a blockchain platform, is an NFT, digital ebook NFT, does that attract sales tax? If it does, who handles that? Then things like collectibles. In different jurisdictions, collectibles attract a different tax rate to just a normal product. Or a use of IP, for example, those might be considered assets. And again, assets are potentially taxed in a different way. So, there are a lot of questions that have not been answered yet. I should be totally clear right now I have not minted an NFT, I have not bought an NFT for a book (as of 28 Feb 2022.) I've bought NFTs for domain names, for my future Web 3 metaverse presence, but I have not bought an art NFT or a music NFT or book NFT because I see these problems are still here. But I wanted to do this presentation because I feel we're almost there, we're almost there. And again, I have to be sure that these things are handled on a platform. So, these are some of the companies that currently offer NFT solutions, specifically for books and publishing. BookchainReadlBookcoinCreatokia (from Bookwire)SoltypeBookvoltsCryptoversalBooksPublicaBooksGoSocialAuthorMint They will inevitably change over time, and they all address different angles. I absolutely suggest you go and check some of these companies out, see what they're doing. And there are lots and there's more emerging all the time. But when assessing the companies, think about how it might apply to your work, look at the percentages involved in terms of the various fees, look at the blockchains they use. There are lots of things to assess. But these are, essentially, smaller companies doing things in the NFT for publishing space. But you might think, ‘Oh, well, you know, this doesn't really matter,' but NFTs are already happening in the mainstream media. You will have seen the hype around art, NFTs, the Beeple $69 million-dollar sale. People ask ‘why does a picture of an ape sell for millions?', but essentially, this is becoming a much bigger deal. It's not about the jpeg, it's about all the functionality within the NFT. But here are just a few bigger companies getting into NFTs. The Financial Times,' talks about Facebook…sorry, Meta, getting into NFTs. YouTube is looking at them. Shopify, which, of course, is full of independent creators, is talking about that. What I like about the Shopify idea is that Shopify helps creators sell physical products. So, if I want to sell my handbound limited edition books, I can do that through Shopify. I can also then, potentially, sell my digital scarce products through Shopify. So, I'm keeping my eye on Shopify for sure. Rakuten, as I record this, Rakuten, which owns Kobo, the ebook and audio bookstore, Rakuten launches NFTs in Japan. So, that's really interesting. Could that mean Kobo could more easily do NFTs? Ebay, which, of course, is a second-hand marketplace for physical goods, now does second-hand digital products with NFTs. And then big brands like the British Museum, Disney, these are all doing NFTs. So, it's not like this is fringe anymore, it's moving into the mainstream. Of course, it's still early days but it's not really really early days. So, then, of course, people will ask, ‘What about Amazon?' Well, if you go on AWS, Amazon Web Services, you can see they already have a blockchain solution, the Amazon-managed blockchain. And interestingly, 25% of all Ethereum, and Ethereum is a particular blockchain, 25% run on AWS. So, even in a so-called ‘decentralized world' we still have the big incumbents who are going to run the technology side, the back-end systems. So, essentially, if Amazon wanted to do NFTs, then they could because they have that back-end potential. So, never say never. Like the Ebay marketplace. If you can buy second-hand print books on Amazon, why won't you be able to buy NFTs in the future? Of course, it involves a massive architecture change but companies do that. How do NFTs fit into the current publishing business model? So, this is how I see the current state of the publishing business model and how NFTs might fit into that. So, we create the book, the manuscript, and we turn it into the existing things that we already do using the existing ecosystem, so, print books, ebooks, audio books, and other forms of licensing. That is the existing model. All I see is the NFTs add to the existing business model. So, I will continue to do all the existing things with my existing books. It's not like I'm going to stop doing all those other things. What I'm considering is adding these special editions on top. So, that might include a special limited edition print run (print scarcity), I might do a Kickstarter for one-of-my books, and that is an established model for doing special print runs. But then I might also do special-edition ebooks and special-edition audiobooks with NFTs for digital scarcity. And when I email my readers with my special print stuff or a new book, I'll also link to my NFTs. Now, I will, obviously, need to educate my readers and there's a lot of education needed in this space, but it's almost like it was when we started doing ebooks. Remember, over a decade ago, I'll take my mum as an example. When ebooks first came out, my mum was like, ‘I would never read an ebook. Why would I do that? That just seems crazy.' And then about, I don't know, 5-6 years ago, she got a Kindle and never looked back, basically. Or my dad, who said he would only ever read the paper in a physical edition who has, essentially, now moved to his iPad. We say we won't do things or we won't accept these things and then we do. But I see this as the model for the next few years, which is we'll carry on doing exactly the same thing with all the other products, and then we'll add on these limited editions. This is where I see the future, the eventual promise of blockchain. And again, it's an architecture shift, and we've seen architecture shifts, over the last couple of decades, within publishing. Architecture changes bring in new opportunities. This is what I would love to see, and I mean I can't promise when this will happen but we will have some kind of identity blockchain. And again, people talk about blockchain being decentralized but we will have companies, DAOs, whatever, who will run certain aspects or certain blockchains that are designed for certain things. People have to do the work to build these architectures, these companies. So, first of all, I think we need an identity blockchain of some kind where authors and rights holders verify their digital identity. Now, many people think that the importance of blockchain is being anonymous but it's not the whole picture. That might be what some people would like, and there are reasons why that's important, but for the purpose of publishing, what we want is the digital identity of the rights holder to be verifiable and their wallet to be verifiable for that particular situation. Now, that doesn't mean that your whole online self needs to be included in this blockchain, this is specifically about intellectual property. Then we have some kind of IP registration blockchain, and this is where we register our intellectual property. So, the point being that I can upload my book before I send it anywhere. And this may help prevent piracy and all of this stuff because, hopefully, with the IP registration, we will have a registration number on a blockchain which then does truly represent the first publication of that book and that will help protect the future of that IP. And then that can be changed by the verified rights holder and will, potentially, have a heads of agreement contract which will redirect payments based on what happens when an author dies, when an estate changes hands, when, you know, a company moves from one to the other. That kind of IP registration central rights is really interesting. For example, right now I'm trying to find someone who can help with this book, Anno Domini by Barnaby Williams. Now, the author is dead but the author's name is a pseudonym, the publishers have basically said they don't know where the estate is anymore. The book is not on Kindle, and I am interested in getting the rights to this book. I love this book, it's fantastic, I would like to publish this in digital. But for the life of me can't get hold of the right people to sort that out. And if there was some kind of IP registration blockchain, then I'd be able to figure that out. Then, of course, what we would like next is publication. It could be exactly the same sites, something like Amazon, Apple, etc., but they will check the IP against this other blockchain. And this will prevent plagiarism, piracy, fraud, and all these other things that plague authors, rights holders, publishers. And we would all like that. Quite often I'll get an email from Amazon saying, ‘Can you verify your copyright ownership of this book because it's been found elsewhere on the internet?' And I'm like, ‘Well, yes, here you go. Here's my proof.' But what I would like to see is publication through some kind of integrated system that allows the smart contract to be applied to all of the different publishing formats we do, as well as NFTs, because this will truly allow the automation of payments through smart contracts down the line to all the different people. So, it won't just be that we can do collaboration for digital products, we can also do them for physical, we can do them for events. We can do all these kinds of things and it will all become automated and amazing! Of course, I don't know how long that might take, if it ever happens. And what we'll probably see, again, is a bit of a hybrid in the way that we do right now in that some of my publications are automated, some of them are manual, some of them have a difficult process, others are super super easy. So, that's how it's going to go. We're not going to move from, ‘This day it looks like this, and this day it all changes,' it will be a slow change in the same way that the last decade has been a slow change to a lot of digital. So, it is early days, but I wanted to put this presentation out because there's a lot of confusion in the community. People are trying to learn things and trying to watch what's happening in the music industry, in the art industry, and thinking about how it can apply to books and publishing so I wanted to get my ideas and thoughts out there. What action should you take right now on NFTs and blockchain? The most important thing is that you don't have to do anything right now, but you do need learn and watch with an open mind. So, I've had a lot of comments from people, when I've been talking about this, they're like, ‘We don't need that. That's terrible,' you know, ‘why would I go anywhere near that?' But I was thinking about my old Nokia phone, back in like 2006, I had one of those Nokia phones. All it could do was text and phone, it was a proper phone. When the iPhone launched in 2007, I said, ‘Why would I need one of those? Why would I need a smartphone that connected to the internet or played music?' you know, ‘why would I need all of that?' And now, of course, my phone is right here by my side and is pretty much always within reach of my hand. I can run my business from my phone. And I did not expect, back in 2006 when I started writing, when I had my Nokia, I did not expect that 15 years later, I would be an author with books all over the world and a multi-6-figure business, as a one-person, solopreneur. That was not what I expected. But I have had an open mind along the way. I didn't expect my podcast to be where it is now when I started it in 2009. Technology is a lot to do with jumping on board, taking advantage of things as they emerge. Blockchain is just emerging. But where might it be in the next decade? Where might it be in the next 15 years? If I think about where I'm going to be in the mid-2030s —I'll be in my 50s — And I still want to be making money, that's for sure. I still want to be writing, I still want to have a thriving business. And so, I'm learning and watching what's happening with an open mind so I can take advantage of these things. So, that's my question for you, what technology have you underestimated in the past? What have you later realized that you might have been wrong about? As an author and a rights holder, please don't sign a contract that has a clause that has something like “all formats existing now and to be invented for the term of copyright,” because, essentially, that will include NFTs. And what is interesting is, even if you don't want to take advantage of blockchain and NFTs right now, you certainly want to be able to have that option in the future. I also think the definition of digital rights is going to become a problem. Some of you might have signed digital rights, some of you might have signed ebook rights or audio-book rights which, again, might stop you doing an NFT limited edition. I think there's a lot of work to be done around contracts, around, you know, terms in contracts and rights and all of this, but, if you want to make sure you can do this in the future, just be very careful what you sign. Now, I'm very happy to sign a lot of rights agreements, and I do a lot of foreign-language subsidiary rights, etc., but that clause stops you taking advantage of things and the publisher may never actually do NFTs with your work. So, just be a little careful of what you sign. And if you're watching this and you are an agent or a publisher, then be very clear in your contracts, what the author is signing. And, you know, the language around special editions I think is interesting, but I foresee there will be a few discussions on this in the future. And then, of course, experiment and try new things. So, if you own your rights, like I do, then why not consider doing an NFT edition? Early adopters do have some advantages, as I know from getting involved in the Kindle early and also with podcasting early, that there are good reasons to get involved early. Now, they're also downsides. For example, I have made some mistakes by jumping on too early onto platforms, signing contracts that I later regretted. So, I am, as I said, watching this space. As of 28 Feb 2022 when I record this, I'm ready to mint, I know what my first NFTs are going to be, I just haven't settled on the platform yet because of all the things I've talked about. So if you control and own your intellectual property rights, this might be something you want to do but the question is, What do you want to create and where do you want to create it? And, of course, you need an audience who might be interested in buying your NFTs. But as the classic quote from Wayne Gretzky goes, ‘Skate to where the puck is going to be.' So, again, if you're thinking right now, ‘This is not important,' doesn't matter, you can just wait. But if we see where the direction of travel is going in terms of Web 3, metaverse, blockchain architecture, I want to be ready for when we get there. And I don't know whether that will be a year, 5 years, 10 years, but keeping an open mind and watching the space I think is important. So, I hope you found this useful. You can find more resources at thecreativepenn.com/future If you have any comments, tweet me @thecreativepenn or leave a comment under the video or on the post. I have a book that goes into a lot of this future stuff: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds: The Impact of Converging Technologies on Authors and the Publishing Industry, where I consider the coming technologies and how our business might change over the next decade. Thank you for listening, and I wish you all the best for your NFTs. The post Creativity, Collaboration, Community, and Cash. NFTs For Authors [Audio] With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can we improve our creativity and release our self-censorship to write more freely? Dan Holloway talks about aspects of creativity as well as physical challenges, neurodiversity, and how technology might augment us in this interview. In the intro, thoughts on Brandon Sanderson's Kickstarter [Kris Rusch]; Guide to Multiple Streams of Income [Self Publishing Advice]; Thoughts on President Biden's Executive Order on crypto and blockchain [The Verge]; My first NFT — Rain Soaked The Ashes of the Dead; Crypto Business Podcast; The AI-Assisted Author and generative art (50% off with coupon MARCH22) This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. Dan Holloway is the author of 9 books across dark fiction, poetry and non-fiction, a performance poet, professional speaker, podcaster, and creativity consultant.  He’s won the Creative Thinking World Championships three times as well as the World Intelligence Championship. He’s also the founder of Rogue Interrobang, dedicated to helping individuals and companies expand their creativity.  You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes From performance poetry to using storytelling and communication as a way to engage audiences with non-fictionWhat is creativity and how can we develop more of it?How Dan's creativity game, Mycelium, can helpHow physical health underpins creativityDan's physical transformation and how he stays consistent over timeNeurodiversity and how writing ‘rules' don't applyHow we are augmented already — and thoughts on VR, AR, and AI You can find Dan Holloway at Rogueinterrobang.com and on Twitter @agnieszkasshoes Dan has chapters in The Healthy Writer on writing with depression, and also in Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives, and Other Introverts on performing your work. Transcript of Interview with Dan Holloway Joanna: Welcome back to the show, Dan. Dan: Hi, it's fabulous to be back after many, many years. Joanna: Many years. We were just saying before I hit record, it was 2013 since you last came on the show, and I'm going to assume that most people possibly haven't heard that episode. So let's start with the basics. Tell us a bit more about you and your author journey and how it's progressed. Dan: Right. I was one of the very early self-publishers back in the days. On Smashwords, in the olden days, you used to get a forward slash and then the number of the book according to which in order you were, and my books were all in three figures. I was amongst the first few 100 books published on Smashwords. So that's how I judge myself as a sort of an early indie author. Back in those days, in 2006, 2007, 2008, I was writing all sorts, thrillers, literary fiction, and after that, I got into poetry, performance poetry. I spent quite a long time on the slam scene. And obviously, that has been harder of late, the last two years. There hasn't been much in-person slam poetry. Most recently, I've gone back to my absolute roots in writing nonfiction. When I say my absolute roots, when I was a kid I grew up as most people – I don't want to say our age, but my age – my hero was Carl Sagan. So that was what I always wanted to do. I was given a copy of Cosmos, I think it was my eighth birthday when the hardback came out, and I read that and I decided that was the kind of thing I wanted to do. I wanted to be the Carl Sagan figure, this public intellectual, for want of a better word. So it feels like writing nonfiction now has gone back to those roots. Joanna: That's really interesting. Obviously, the performance poetry scene, as you say, because of the pandemic has dropped off in person. Obviously, we've known each other through various incarnations of ourselves. In my mind, you're always a performance poet. That's how I think of you in my mind. I see you performing. But it's funny because you say the public intellectual, and you've won these creative thinking championships, and you do have a sort of almost polymath ability to explore things. The poetry side and the performance side; is that going to come back into your life or do you think that was part of it? Dan: Absolutely. And performance is very much still there with nonfiction, and that goes with the public intellectual thing, I think. I love the engagement speakers. I don't know if you know the sci-com community, for example, science communications. People who speak passionately and present incredibly well their nonfiction work, I think that there's a real performative element to that that I love to bring those sides of what I do in. I'm very lucky being still in Oxford. We have quite a lot of people who are exploring this space and quite a lot of funding for projects that explore this space where you get experts who work with creatives to create fabulously multimedia performative ways of communicating information. And that really excites me, bringing those two sides, the performance side and the nonfiction side together. I spend a lot of time analyzing really, really good performances and the structure of it. Things like The Hero's Journey and how that relates to really well put together YouTube videos. Communication, storytelling, performance, narrative, nonfiction. All these things tie together in a way of getting an idea across and getting people excited about something. Joanna: I think that's so important because in the indie space, there's progressively become more of a focus on you can only be successful if you write in a genre type of thing. And yet, where I see your career, and mine as well, is that we can't and we don't want to do that. ‘Don't put me in a box‘ kind of thing. Dan: I know. Joanna: What I love there is you're talking about nonfiction and speaking, which many people see as like one side over here, and then creativity and poetry and fiction. They all come together, don't they? They don't have to be so siloed. Dan: No, absolutely, they do. I think this is one of the exciting things, as I said, about the rise of high-value YouTube, streaming services. I think we'll probably spend some time talking about VR later. There are all these ways in which these things are starting to come together in a single space. And there is an opportunity for people who want to explore lots of different things together. I would say we're very lucky here in Oxford. I'm co-convener of the Futures Thinking Network, and we do a lot of this here. We get people who are academic experts in the field and then we combine them with creatives and we do multimedia performances, we give talks, we get public engagement, and you're never exploring any one thing at a time, you're always exploring more than one thing in any project you do. I think there's immense value to doing that. The idea that you're never looking at a single point, you're never looking at a single focus, but you're always trying to balance things, and that I find creatively as incredibly sort of empowering and liberating. Joanna: Yes, and underlying it all is creativity. And of course, you have one of your books, which is called, Our Dreams Make Different Shapes. It is about creativity. How do you define creativity? Because sometimes it's a bit nebulous. Dan: I use a really simple but really effective definition which is just that it's new stuff. To be slightly more expansive, bringing something new into the world. And that can either be a thing or it can be a work or it can be simply an idea. Almost always, you're not creating something out of nothing. It's a new way of joining things up that haven't been joined up in that way together. So that's, I think, probably the slightly more traditional way of looking at creativity, is new connections. Joanna: You said an idea. In my mind, in terms of we're talking to authors, and you said, creating new stuff, but to me, it's the execution, not the idea. People have loads of ideas all the time, but until you execute that and create something new that actually exists in the world, that idea is meaningless. Dan: It is, yeah. I'm not sure how much putting an idea into the world in a new way I think is creative. A lot of what we think of as creativity I think is an extremely skillful I'm going to say art, because I don't think art and creativity are the same thing, art and technique. I think creativity is often the first step in a process. But you're absolutely right. One of the things I talk about in the book and when I give talks is what I call the Cassandra Curse, which is that it's not enough simply to come up with a good idea, you have to get that idea somehow implemented in the world. Creative people are very, very good at having the best ideas that never then get made and nothing gets done with them. And in particular, the more original your idea, the less likely people are to listen to it. That's one of the problems that we face with creativity in general and authors in particular face because we have to convince people to buy it. The next thing they read has to be ours. Why should it be ours rather than someone else's? And the more different it is from everything else on the shelves, the harder to sell it is in that way. Joanna: Yes, the perennial issue. I do actually like that you've separated the idea of creativity and then skillful art. So the creativity is the ideas, all the ideas that we have and the reason almost that we want to write a book is because we have all these ideas and they're running around in our heads, and they make things a bit crazy. And then we try it. They're amazing ideas. And then you try and write them down and that's really, really hard. Dan: And that's really, really hard, yes. Joanna: That's the hard bit. Dan: I think creativity in that sense would be writing something in a new way whereas most of what we do after we've had the idea is art. It's following something that we've spent years or decades learning how to do and chiseling it into that thing that is then out in the world. I'm not sure that's creative, but it's incredibly valuable and it's the hardest part of the process. Joanna: Exactly. Let's just wind it back to the idea section because I still remember when I had my day job, back in the day, and I still remember feeling that ‘I don't have any ideas. I could never write fiction. I don't have ideas like that. Those writers, they're amazing. I could never be that.' People still email me saying they feel that way. If anyone listening feels like they don't have creative ideas, how do they improve that intellectual muscle? Dan: That's really interesting. One of the most enjoyable things I do when I teach creativity is I work with some writers' groups here in Oxford. The principle I teach is that to think of creativity as a second-order rather than a first-order skill. So it's a proper soft skill. I think part of the problem with creativity is that people talk about it as a soft skill but treat it as a hard skill. So it's not about technique. It's about rewiring your brain. The drills I do with people using…I'm not sure if I'm allowed to plug my game, my creative thinking game, ‘Mycelium.‘ mycelium creativity game, by dan holloway Joanna: Yes, please do. Dan: I think of it like, imagine you're a sprinter. A key part of your training is to get stronger. So you would do squats, you would do bench presses, you don't go out on the track, stand on the starting blocks, the gun goes off, and you start doing squats and bench presses. Without doing squats and bench presses, you can't do the running. I think of the creative thinking drills I do in that way. It's behind the scenes training to get your brain so that your brain is in a more receptive state and a more fluid state for forming ideas. It works with two ideas that come out of neuroscience. One is based on the really famous study of cab drivers that I'm sure you've come across, I'm sure your listeners have come across, which showed that when cab drivers study the knowledge to become a London black cab driver, you have to learn to navigate your way around the streets of London in your head and finding the shortest route between any two places, knowing where all the diversions are and knowing where all the landmarks are. The training involved in that actually changes the shape of the hippocampus area of these cabbies' brains, which is really interesting. The study that found that has been backed up by studies into memory training that basically this kind of highly sensory, highly visual way of almost training your brain to perform this navigation task will increase the matter in the part of your brain that we associate with creativity. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is some fascinating studies on jazz musicians and battle rappers which showed that when they started improvising, literally, the whole of the front of their brain, the thinking-slow part of your brain, the new part of your brain in Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast-thinking slow model, the self-censor or the executive functioning bit of the brain, it switched off. Everything reverted to the motor part of the brain, what people call the lizard brain, the old-fashioned part of the brain. And that was the key to improvising, was that they were able to switch off the bit of the brain that self-censored. So what I do with writers is I give them exercises to literally work on those two parts of the brain. Highly sensory, navigating knowledge-seeking exercises to increase the gray matter in the brain, and then using the dopamine system by playing a game that rewards original thinking to make it easier for us to switch off our self-censor and therefore that bit of us that stops us going places. When you have an interesting idea and you think, ‘Oh no, I mustn't go there.' It enables us to switch that off and be more exploratory. The way I help writers to cut it short would be to say, ‘I'm the equivalent of a personal trainer that gets the sprinter in the gym during the basic weight training to prepare the body for what happens off the track. And in that way I do the basic things that prepare the mind for what happens when people want to generate ideas.' So it's not about process, and a lot of creative thinking training is about the process of writing, how you go about getting more ideas for a book. It's much more what I do about getting people's brains in a state of readiness so that when they have an idea they can explore it more fully. Joanna: That sounds really cool. One more time, tell us the name of the game and also if people can buy that, because I think I need a copy. (I got one!) Dan: It's called ‘Mycelium' which I thought was a perfect metaphor for the way the brain works. The mycelium, of course, the root network of the mushroom and the stuff of nightmares. I know you like stuff of nightmares and we probably talked about this before. The oldest and largest living organism in the world is a mycelium in Oregon that is three and a half square miles in area. It's one and a half miles across and two and a half miles long. And it's somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 years old. And you never see it except through small mushrooms that grow up through trees. So it's the stuff of nightmares but also the stuff that shows collective potential. Yes, and you can get you can buy Mycelium on my website. Joanna: Fantastic. I'll link to that in the show notes. You do so much but there's a few things I wanted to also ask about. You were there talking about the squats and the lifting before you go run a race, and you run races and you do lifting. You actually have another book called Lift which is based around strength training which I also do and love. But the book is also about attitude. You've changed your focus in your career but you've also changed your physical shape quite dramatically. And you do have some before and after photos on your website. Dan Holloway Joanna: I find it interesting because I feel like so often we are brain people. We're all focused on our brain and we love the mind and we love all that. And then sometimes we neglect our bodies or we do things that don't make things optimum. Talk about what triggered your physical transformation. Dan: It was really simply last spring it was realizing that being the size I was would put me at higher risk of complications if I got COVID. Joanna: That's a good one. Dan: It was as simple as that. It was pragmatic. I was 19 stone at the time. It was really strange because I was quite fit. I had started my transformation, I guess, in my mid-40s. I took up ultrarunning but I'd never really lost weight. I thought of myself as really quite fit. I could run 100 kilometers which probably a lot of people in their mid-40s couldn't. But I was still really out of shape. And then I say I made the conscious decision in April last year. No, not last year anymore, is it? It's now April two years ago, gosh. Joanna: April 2020. Dan: Over the course of the next 18 months, I lost six stone very, very slowly by introducing several sustainable changes in my life. But of course, because I never do anything quite normally, I wanted to set myself some physical challenges as well. So I made lifting and running at the heart of that transformation. Joanna: I think you link these things quite well in your writing. How does physical health and lifestyle practices underpin creativity? Dan: The way I think of it is what I call the Jacquard, if you know the Jacquard loom, which is one of the ways that people weave carpets. The way a Jacquard loom works is that you have lots of different colors representing the different colors in the carpet. At any one time, say five of the six colors will form the backing, but one of them will be pulled to the fore and form the main color of the pattern of the carpet or fabric. This is how I view training my mind, training my body as this process of keeping… It goes back to what we were saying earlier about not having any one focus, keeping lots of things in balance together. So at any one time, I would be training myself for endurance, speed, and strength. I'll also be training my mind for things like speed reading and speed cubing but also for memory and creativity. So all of those I will be training at any one time, but it's sort of ticking along in the background. At any one time I will be training one thing really seriously with a view to try and get better. And it feeds on another principle in creativity which is that the power of our knowledge, it's not what we think of as the sum of everything we know. So it's not everything we know added up together, it's more of the product of what we know. That working knowledge, useful knowledge is more about everything multiplied together rather than everything added up. I'm a big fan of the idea of compounding, exponential improvement, and focusing on lots of things having a multiplicative effect rather than additive effect. I'm very much not a fan of the marginal gains idea. I'm much more of a fan of the idea that if you focus on lots of things at the same time, the whole can be more than the sum of its parts. Joanna: I love that. I love this multiplier idea. I'm totally with you. And I've been lifting more seriously. I have a trainer and twice a week we are lifting and we're focusing on becoming stronger. I love it. It feels really good. It almost feels like it is a multiplier in terms of energy. But are there also sort of neurochemical things that help us, coming on to mental health. Exercise and mental health are quite tightly wound together in many ways. Dan: It's very individual and I don't like universalizing, because I think a lot of people, the memes about give up your medicines, go out into nature, which I think is sort of… Joanna: Irresponsible. Dan: Irresponsible. But I think for me, yes, it has definitely been the case. My fitness and my strength are what I would call core or baseline changes that have enabled many more changes. Part of it is the energy as you mentioned, part of it is confidence. There are also physiological benefits, benefits to bone density and resting heart rate and things like that and getting blood flow to the brain, helping your oxygenation of the blood. It helps the heart work more efficiently. So there are all sorts of things like that that mean that if you're fitter and stronger, it helps you then to have more time and do other things more efficiently. And then that starts to feed into it. You can then automate more, your processes can be more effective, and that creates even more time which you can use to create more benefits and so on and it becomes a virtuous loop. Obviously, you need to be careful, especially at my age, and not push things too hard and not get injured because consistency is the absolute key. Joanna: That in itself, consistency is the key, and also taking a longer time. For Americans listening, you were around 265 pounds? Dan: Yes. Joanna: And now you're around 180 pounds? Dan: Yes. Joanna: I think it's around that. Dan: That sounds pretty much spot on, yes. Joanna: But it took you 18 months, which for many people is actually a long time, but for other people it's no time at all. It's like, ‘Whoa, that's crazy that you managed that.' I always feel like the idea of doing things slowly, consistency, longevity in the market, like we were talking about. We met each other online in the early days of when we were on Twitter, probably 2009, 2010, and that's probably when we met online. You and I have both been doing creative stuff for many, many years now. It feels like health, physical health, is the same as a writing career in that you don't just wake up one morning and go, ‘Yeah, I'm just going to run 100 kilometers today.' Dan: But you might wake up and decide that you're going to do that, but you don't actually go and do it. Joanna: Yeah. You don't do it that day. But how do we commit? Because, physical health, again, it's like writing. You have to commit to it and be consistent, and there's no real shortcuts, is there? How have you stuck to your commitment? What keeps you going? Dan: The key for me is it's one of those interesting things, and you're right, and there's some really interesting facts that I've come across in a lot of places is that people who get into shape and lose weight, of those, only 5% will still be in shape five years later. That's a quite alarming figure. So you have to do something quite drastic to be in that fight. The key for me has been not to do anything that requires willpower. I think that's quite hard for people to get their heads around. There is, I think as you know, because I've worked with you on a chapter of one of your books on this, there is a lot of bad information out there in the wellness space. And if there's bad information out there in the wellness space on mental health and so on, it's even worse with fitness. dan holloway has a chapter in the healthy writer on writing with depression There is an awful lot of promoting quick fixes and things that require willpower. And the short answer is that if something requires willpower, you're not going to be able to do it for the rest of your life because life gets in the way and at some point something else needs your willpower. I have quite a lot of natural advantages. I love exercise. A lot of people don't. I also have a body that's, despite everything I've thrown at it in myriad truckfuls of pasties and so on over the years, it still lets me do stuff. And most people who are my age, that might not be the case. I'm in my 50s, yes. I turned 50 a couple of months ago. And I'm also quite lucky that I like lots of food. But I followed the principle of losing weight by eating more rather than eating less because that's a very good way of avoiding having the willpower to say no, just say more to other things. It's the principle of eating low calorie-dense foods and eating an awful lot of them. So I will eat…literally, for some meals I'll have…as my side dish, I'll have a kilo of salad. It probably sounds disgusting, but like half a kilo of sprouts. Joanna: I love sprouts. Dan: I love sprouts as well. So yes, that sort of thing. And then I don't deny myself anything. Someone said to me on Twitter when I said this, they said, ‘What happens if you want carbs?' And I say, ‘I eat carbs if I want them.' I eat as much as I want, but because I'm eating a high volume of low calorie-dense foods, I'm always full. So I don't get hungry. That is really, really key I think. There's no willpower, there's no pushing through these places where you feel really hungry. And it's really tasty food. Joanna: This is individual differences again, I feel, because I personally find that eating a more keto low-carb, then I'm not hungry. Whereas if I eat a kilo of sprouts, I'm really, really hungry. So again, there's so many variations. And like you said, there's so many rules and a lot of bad rules. But like you said, the key is you can't use willpower for long term change. What you have to do is almost trick yourself and hack your behavior so that you do it because you want to do it. So you have to find whatever it is that works to motivate yourself and you can't white knuckle the change that you've done. You can't white knuckle a writing career either, can you? Dan: No. I think people think that this happened to people they see as overnight successes. So people have this view that writing you come out of nowhere and it's the same in all creative arts, I think. People don't see that it's just actually years and years of consistent slog, and you can't do the consistent slog unless you actually just really love it. You don't necessarily have to love it to start with but you can come to love it. It was an interesting thing that I read reading I think it was a biography of Judit Polgár, who was a famous chess prodigy. It sounds really awful. She was subject to an experiment by her father to try and what does it take to create a chess prodigy and/or to create a prodigy. The thing that emerged that they all said at the end is that if you want to be really, really good at something you just have to love it. You can't do it by force or by simple coercion or willpower alone. It has to be something you love. And I think that's the key for writing as well. Joanna: Talking of individual differences, you talk about being neurodiverse and you work with a lot of organizations on mental health and disability issues. What is neurodiversity, in particular as it relates to the writing community and how can we improve our writing ecosystem for people who are neurodivergent? Dan: I'd say neurodivergent rather than neurodiverse, because neurodiverse implies a group. A group could be neurodiverse but a person would be neurodivergent, I think. I'm ADHD. You'd never guess but I struggled to stick with a genre, and dyspraxic, which has a lot of overlap with ADHD and is also really interesting because I think that's one of the reasons I've got so into lifting. Because I've had to work on my awareness of myself in space. And it's something you don't necessarily associate with physical activity. The first person I ever met who was openly dyspraxic was a bodybuilder when I was teaching with one of my students, and also bipolar. So I think the way it affects me is a lot of…and this comes down to what we've been saying. A lot of general advice doesn't work. I think the writing community loves its rules. It loves to say things like, “You have to stick with one genre. You have to write every day. You have to not only write every day but write in the morning rather than in the afternoon for some reason.” There are all sorts of things that we're told we have to do. And if your brain is wired slightly differently, you can't necessarily do that. And also, going back to what I was saying to your last question, it will take the joy out of writing. So part of my journey has been to find ways of working consistently that work for me with rules that work for my brain rather than things that I'm told to do. And I think my approach to skipping around amongst genres and skipping around amongst mediums, and also trying lots of new things has been key to that. I guess the way it works for me is that people would probably recognize my voice as it were through my writing, even if I write in different genres, it's all going to be me, because I write slightly quite oddly. I see quite a lot of writers doing really well is almost the Iain Banks/ Iain M Banks model, isn't it? Of not just working in one area but being distinctive across the areas you work in. I think that works for my kind of brain much better than trying to funnel myself into just one focus. Joanna: And there's a lot of call, obviously, very importantly for the writing and publishing to be far more diverse. And of course, race and gender and sexuality are important parts of that. I think your discussion of neurodiversity, and I guess more of an acceptance, again, of individual differences and the fact that people are different, and different doesn't have to mean bad. It doesn't have to mean wrong. And in fact, perhaps in a more creative world that we would like to live in, it's better. We need diversity in every sense of the word. We're just asking people to be more accepting of individual differences. Dan: Yes. Publishing has a huge amount of problems. I've been on several podcasts actually talking about this. I don't know if you know, Cat Mitchell's study on disability in publishing. Joanna: No. Dan: I would recommend it to everyone. It's really quite damning. A lot of the issues are the same as the general diversity issues across the pieces. Forcing people into practices that we think of as being just the way it's done. When a scene is dominated by people who are, shall we say, homogenous, by a group that's rather homogenous, things become the standard way of doing things. And if something becomes the standard way of doing things, it takes on this quality of almost. It becomes like a natural law. So the idea that you have to write 1000 words a day, for example, becomes a given. And the idea you have to write in a certain genre all the time is a given. This sort of write, publish, repeat model is “Yup, that's the way it has to be done.” I think that's one of the main barriers to diversity is we've taken conventions and given them the status of laws rather than seeing them as conventions and seeing that there's a different way of getting to the same result which is a compelling story. Because that's what we all want to do is we all want to tell compelling stories. At the end of the day, we are all about transporting our readers to somewhere, whether it's for the rest of their life or for a few minutes, that takes them out of themselves and makes their lives better. And there are so many different ways of doing that that it just seems plain odd that we would assume there's only one or two different ways of doing it. Joanna: Absolutely. But there's also this desire for the hack or the rule or one way we can make it, and, unfortunately, that is also not true. You and I could definitely talk forever, but I do want to circle back on the VR and AR side of things, the virtual reality, augmented reality, which you talked about near the beginning. We're both fans of technology as independent authors in different ways. We definitely don't agree on everything. But when we think about neurodiversity and also physical diversity and how you could portray yourself in a future way when we don't look at each other physically. You and I, we know each other, but we're not looking at each other right now, and this is an audio-only interview. And if we were doing this in a space where either one of us could change our voices and use a different avatar, in a virtual reality world, how are people going to portray themselves? What do you see with the potential of VR and AR? Why are you interested in it? Dan: This is something I find absolutely fascinating. The use of virtual reality. There are two aspects to it. One is the storytelling aspect. That as a storyteller, I find virtual reality absolutely fascinating because it gives me more world-building possibilities. And for creativity, in particular, which is about connections, one of the things that excite me is that technology has finally got to the space where if you say, for example, the standard question, come up with as many uses as you can for paper clip. Virtual reality means that finally, you can actually physically try these things out using virtual reality. You can take the creative problem-solving into the virtual space and treat it as though it was a real space and do things that you would otherwise have to have either a lab or changes to the rules of physics to enable you to do. So there's massive creative potential in that. Also, yes, this question of how we represent ourselves. I don't know how much you or your listeners are aware of the sort of the Cyborg movement. Joanna: Tell us about it. Dan: It's part of the transhuman, post-human movement. It's part of the disability community. It comes out of the idea that a lot of us already rely on augmentation, and augmentation as part of our identity. Whether that's a prosthesis, whether it's a wheelchair, whether it's medication, or whether it's simply the fact that a lot of us have to mask in society because a lot of the behaviors that we would otherwise have aren't socially acceptable. So we are already augmented. We're already not simply just the atoms that make up our physical bodies and the neurons or whatever that make up our minds. Virtual reality takes that a little bit further and enables us to have more autonomy over the way that we are, that we portray ourselves, that we are subjective. I find almost that it will become more so more universal that people do this is an exciting idea. That people are finally coming around to this idea that actually no one is what they see. We both studied theology and we've done a bit of philosophy that comes with this. We assume that what you see is what you get when you meet someone and talk to them, and that's quite clearly not true if you think about it philosophically, but it seems true. Because we seem as though we're having these interactions that are direct and not mediated. What technology does is makes the mediation clear. I think there is a real value to that because it makes us think much more about who we are separately from the person we portray, and who the person we're speaking to is separately from the person they portray. Therefore, it makes us think about things in a more complex way and I think that that has to be a good thing. Joanna: I do too and I'm looking forward to this as well. I think quite a lot about how I will portray myself when this happens when we meet as avatars in a space. I always talk about being a bit of a vanilla goth. I would love to be covered in tattoos. I really would. But part of me does not want to do that in my real life. But it may be that my avatar in the virtual space has tattoos and maybe those tattoos change every time I change my mind about what I want those to mean and the symbolism and all of that. I think about that. Dan: They don't have four hours of needles, right? Joanna: Yes, exactly. Also I could change them a lot more easily in a VR space. But I know a lot of authors and there's so much misinformation, there's so much negativity about all of this stuff. We are talking about this in not a Meta/Facebook way in a bigger concept. One of the things we were just mentioning before the call was the idea of brain implants, which to many people are very scary. But we are seeing Elon Musk and the Neuralink program, which are helping people trapped in a physical body move into a different realm. I know there's some sort of mind-reading technology that they're looking at. What do you think about this frontier? Dan: I'm ambivalent but in a completely positive…I'm a positive ambivalent. We were talking about this earlier, but there are lots of fantastic things that inevitably get hijacked. I think this is probably one of them. I love the potential. I think, as someone who has spent a lot of my life on medication, the idea that “Oh, no, you mustn't mess with that,” it just goes out of the window straight away because I'm used to my mind and my body being messed with by medication, so having something in my brain doesn't feel…I've had something in my brain ever since I've started taking antidepressants as it were so it doesn't feel necessarily something scary. As much as I don't necessarily want to quote Elon Musk in a way that's so deep and so profound, but he's right when he says we are already cyborgs. He says we already have mobile phones, or whatever. We already use technology to improve our brains. And we have been doing ever since we started writing things down, for example. Writing something down is using an external technology because you can't hold it in your brain. I don't see the qualitative problem that a lot of people see with this. I do think that it's quite scary that it's an expensive technology that will inevitably widen inequalities because that tends to be what happens with expensive technologies. But I think I wish it didn't. I find the whole idea of biohacking in general really quite exciting. I know it's quite problematic and a lot of people are very worried about it, but I think the part of me that gets excited by technology overrides that and wants to know what happens and wants to be part of exploring what happens. It sort of comes back to I think…if we last had a podcast scheduled in 2013, we may have talked about ‘American Mary.' Joanna: I can't remember. Dan: Because that I'm sure it must be one of your favorite films because it's so you. Joanna: I don't watch horror films. I only read horror books. Dan: Oh. So ‘American Mary' is about a med student who earns money by performing body modification. The whole body modification moving into biohacking sphere really excites me in terms of what the possibilities are. I guess it goes with the fact that I do competitive mind sports, for example, that it simply feels like part of training out. I want to see what the limits of the human brain are. I feel as though trying to have this idea of you've got to keep it real, you've got to keep it natural or you've got to keep it the way nature intended is…we're already so far beyond that point I wish we could just get over it and find out what the limits are and what the possibilities are. Joanna: I think also you and I are both very curious people. Curiosity will always win over. Yes, there are always doubts, but curiosity comes first. You mentioned biohacking and body modification. Of course, you helped me with my books Desecration and Delirium on the mental health side. I do want to circle back. I know we're out of time but I just can't stop asking this question. You talked about a qualitative problem of using some kind of augmentation. So I get this. Using AI tools, like GPT-3 as a writer, which to me is like a collaborative, creative, interesting, curious tool that I can use. I'm the person directing it. But people say, “That's not fair, that's wrong, that's unethical. We shouldn't do this kind of thing.” Do you think that's a fear of technology or is it this qualitative problem, like we're human, therefore, we're best? Dan: I think there is a qualitative problem that people think that…human exceptionalism, I think, is an issue. It's an issue that is going to come more and more to the fore both through the development of AI but also through issues around climate. The whole question of what place does humanity have in the world, and is it a place that's set apart from everything else? I think for a lot of writers, they feel issues around copyright probably still. They're nervous about the fact that AI is trained on datasets that includes their words and they're not getting any benefit from that or perceived benefit from that. I think this catches up with something that we've probably talked about many times which I think is that copyright law still hasn't even begun to think about the digital age let alone caught up with it. I think this is going to get more and more the cases as AI develops, not just in terms of, does AI have copyright? Does the person who program the AI have copyright? But in terms of the datasets that feed the AI to do things. I think also people are just worried about automation and they're worried about being automated. I think some of the narratives from when I was a student around chess, for example, haven't helped. The idea that once you reach the singularity, this idea when AI overtakes us then that will be it and we'll be redundant. People think that that's what happened with chess when Garry Kasparov lost. And that just isn't the case. And Go more recently. So everyone who hasn't watched AlphaGo, the story of Google DeepMind's development of the AI that finally mastered the game of Go. These are really good examples of how humans and machines work together. We can learn more about things that feel deeply human by having machines that can also do them in ways that we find both technically accomplished but also surprising. In the fields of chess and Go, we have already seen people who are really quite heavily on the ‘this is an art' side of the debate, say, ‘Well, actually, I think we've got these games that have been with us for thousands of years and we have already learned something about the essence of these games that we wouldn't have learned if machines hadn't started playing.' I think that will happen with writing too. So I think people are frightened that they will be automated but I think they needn't be. Joanna: Me too. Absolutely. At the end of the day, it circles back to creativity which is, what do you want to achieve? Certainly, at the moment, the machines don't have their own desires. We're the ones with the desires and then we're interested in the technologies and different ways of making that happen, of putting these things in the world. Oh my goodness, we're going to have to have another conversation about that, I think. So we'll be back in part two at some point and it won't be another what, eight years, we'll do it before then. Dan: Yes. Joanna: Where can people find you and everything you do online? Dan: They can find me mainly through the website, Rogueinterrobang, which is my creative thinking company website. And everything is linked out from there. They can also find my fiction books should they ever wish to, all available on online stores. Joanna: Fantastic. Dan: And poetry, they can find on YouTube. If they put me into YouTube, they will come up with a skateboarder and a guitar player and some strange person doing poetry which is me. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dan. That was great. Dan: Thank you.The post Improve Your Creativity With Dan Holloway first appeared on The Creative Penn.