The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Is digital narration with AI voices good enough for non-fiction or fiction audiobooks? Can human narrators benefit through voice licensing? What are the options for sales and distribution? Taylan Kamis from Deep Zen explains digital narration for audiobooks, and I share some samples from my digitally narrated books through Deep Zen. Taylan Kamis is the CEO and co-founder of Deep Zen Limited. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is Deep Zen?How good is the quality of AI narration for non-fiction — and for fiction, where emotional resonance is so important?How AI narration may benefit human narrators with voice licensing, and Deep Zen's Ethical StatementWhere can you distribute and sell AI narrated audiobooks — and when will this expand for indie authors?Cost and revenue related to AI narrationWhen will AI narration become mainstream? You can find Taylan Kamis at deepzen.io and on Twitter @DeepZen4 I also included samples of my fiction and non-fiction books that Deep Zen has digitally narrated. You can listen on the links below: Co-Writing a Book: Benefits of Co-Writing. Digitally narrated by Alice (British female)Sins of Violence, a short story. Digitally narrated by William (British male) If you'd like to listen to the entire books, you can purchase the digitally narrated audiobooks for 30% off using discount coupon: 2021 (until the end of Dec 2021) directly from me at Payhip.com/thecreativepenn. [Here's how to apply the coupon.] The audiobooks are delivered by Bookfunnel and you can listen on their free app. Transcript of Interview with Taylan Kamis Joanna: Taylan Kamis is the CEO and co-founder of Deep Zen Limited. Welcome to the show, Taylan. Taylan: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Joanna: It's so interesting to talk to you. What is Deep Zen and why are you so passionate about AI for voice? Taylan: Deep Zen is a synthetic voice company focusing on creating human-like speech and emotion using AI. As a background, I was always interested in human-machine interaction. So the starting idea was to build a system that can read any text as a human would do, and it will be indistinguishable. Then we start looking into the technical side; what are the obstacles, whether the technology is there. And in the last three, four years, the deep learning, the AI has come so far that we achieved what we were aiming for three, four years ago, sooner than we were expecting. I think it is about productivity, making it easier to create audiobooks. So if you think about the content production on six, seven hours of recording, editing for one hour of finished content. Historically, I think it's hampered growth on the availability of audio content, especially non-English languages. I would like to remove the barriers around audio content creation and make the content available to a wider audience with a better and wider selection. So it is about I think, the high level, it's about having a choice and availability. And it's also, I think when you introduce a new technology, it also opens up new ways of looking at different businesses. So publishing is one of our verticals. We also work as a platform company supporting online education businesses, synthetic video companies. But even in publishing, for example, there are some use cases that some publishers are actually experimenting with having an early audio version of the books that are going to be released next year, for example, next season as an advanced copy and send them to the buyer. If you're a buyer who needs to go through 12 books a week, it is also about convenience. I think making those content available to the wider publishing community in different use cases is also about improving productivity, making life easier for people. Joanna: I love that idea of the digital ARC. I've heard that a couple of times now and we all think about selling them later on, but you're right. There are these other use cases. Let's talk about what some people call the ‘quality,' because you said that what you envisioned three or four years ago has now come to pass. And certainly, I'll be sharing my examples from Deep Zen on this show. Where do you think we are? People seem to think that nonfiction is better than fiction. Is that about the technology or is that about expectations of listeners around actors and that kind of thing? Where's the quality right now with AI narrated audio? Taylan: Currently we get great results with nonfiction with little editing. We have human inputs in our processes, so you get the first natural language processing and the speech system giving you the first version. Although we are a voice company, we also build a system that can analyze the context, looking into the characters, identifying the genre. So all that information is also passed to the system. Then we have the human inputs in terms of the editing, but more and more, it's actually, especially for the nonfiction titles, the output that we are getting from the system is good enough that very little touch points are required, which will actually help the authors because it means that we can provide it at a more reasonable cost point. So it will make the technology more available to the authors. I think the key difference between fiction and nonfiction is dialogue. So how actually the story is told. We've been working really hard actually on this, the natural language processing system to actually identify the characters. We are moving to the next stage in the development that the AI can change the voice based on the story, the characters. At some point, I think, we will be available to have multiple voices talking to each other. So it's a development, but you are right, so far, the nonfiction we are getting better results and it needs a little bit more human input for the fiction side, if it makes sense. Joanna: Absolutely. And, of course, there are fears around this as there are about a lot of AI things. One of the biggest is around AI, these synthetic voices taking jobs away from narrators and voice talent. I know you have an ethical statement on Deep Zen, so I'd love you to talk a bit about that. What are your thoughts on AI narration taking jobs from human narrators? Taylan: I think human and AI systems can coexist. We work with the narrator community and we license voices. Once we actually bring a new voice artist into our platform, for each piece of work that we are actually completing using that artist's voice, we pay a royalty scheme back to the artist. And we use pseudonym names and it is actually an additional revenue stream. Think about the physical limitations of recording and how many titles that voice artists can complete in a year. So if you actually extrapolate and if you introduce AI and make it available in different use cases, different platforms, different countries, it will be an addition. I see it as a contribution to the narrators' mainstream work and they don't have to do anything for that. We have some cases, for example, especially, for example, on the language training side, we have overseas customers using U.K.-based narrators to create content. So normally those people wouldn't be coming into U.K. markets to hire voice artists, narrators. So that's, for example, an additional revenue stream that wouldn't normally be coming to that narrator's voice side. And I think it's also about the scale. Just to give you the idea, there are 50 million eBooks, I think about 50 million print titles. And so far, the audiobook numbers are around half a million. And if you think about it, 90% is in English. And if you think about American's Audible starting this 20 years, 25 years ago, There's no way you can make all this content, 50 million ebooks available in audio format without having some sort of AI solution involved. And when you look into the other markets, non-English markets, like, French, German, Spanish, the numbers are really, really miniscule. So I think in Germany, where you have the highest spending per capita for books, we have around 30,000 titles, in French, I think less than 15,000. So there's a huge disparity between the availability in different languages. I think AI is going to make that content available on a larger scale. And in our model, what we actually want is the narrators to benefit from that. So we want to share the value created by using AI with the narrator community. That's kind our approach from the beginning. Joanna: Now I love that. And that's why I've chosen to make my first books with Deep Zen, because I like that ethical statement. I think that's really great. And I'm using one of those voices. And in fact, I agree that we absolutely must get more content into audio, not just in English, but as you say, in all these languages where they don't have such a mature audiobook market. But even in English, I've just done a short story, which I also read myself. I'm obviously British female. And the voice I used from Deep Zen is a British male, the voice of William. And what I like is the ability to make more versions of our audio in different voices that might either help the story or just that people like to listen in accents that reflect their own life experience. So perhaps an American female might like to listen to that voice, whereas I like to listen to British female. So I see that there are also opportunities for multiple voices within a language or even multiple accents, for example, how many accents there are in each different language. I see this as almost, even bigger than just language. Taylan: Yes. The other example I would give is the Edward Herman example. Edward Herman was a very well-known and liked American artist and also audiobook narrator. He passed away in 2014. We actually got in touch with his estate family. We licensed his voice. We used old recordings, audiobook recordings. Now his legacy goes on. So we are actually able to produce audiobooks. He's one of the favorite narrators in our system. So it is possible. The AI also makes all these different use cases possible. One of the other things that we are thinking about is also introducing a narrator program. So working with narrators, creating a digital replica of their voices, and get them on board with our system. Then we are thinking about opening the system, the software to the narrators, and they can actually create books, produce books, using their own voices, but the synthetic versions of them. It will enable them to actually produce a higher number of outputs. For example, they can keep on doing the human narration or they can use the automated AI version and go and edit the book and they can actually produce it through their own voices. So that's one of the things that we are actually currently exploring about as well. Joanna: That is absolutely what I want to do. I'll be a customer for you as soon as I can be! Taylan: You should do it. Yes. Joanna: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because for my own audiobooks, because now I've experienced the quality of yours. Even if I just get the AI model to read it, and it's 90%, even if it's 90% or 80% complete, and I'm happy, then there's just the little edits that have to be done. That just makes things a lot easier. I think that's going to be brilliant and that will put the power into the hands of the narrators because then they can be the ones to say, ‘Okay, I can do more work this way,' as you said. That brings in a question about what is digital narration, though? Because at the moment, a lot of the big audiobook platforms don't allow digital narration, but if it's actually a licensed voice of a real human that's mastered by an AI or whatever, that seems to cross a line. I wonder what the definition will be at that point. Taylan: It is an interesting question, actually. I think it's a timing question. It is not ‘if', but ‘when' question for adoption and I think we can refer to some of the research work. I think the Audio Publishers Association, they did a consumer survey. I think they're saying that the broad acceptance of AI narrators, 81% saying that they would still be interested in listening an audiobook narrated using a high-quality artificial intelligence or AI voice. And they say 58% saying discovering a book that they enjoy, AI narrator, it has no impact on their opinion. So I think it might be early days, but I think it's going to become norm. As the acceptance increases, I think there's going to be an amalgamation of human voice and the AI voice. There are some platforms that are actually helping podcast producers to actually edit some of the pick-up sessions or the changes using the synthetic copy of their voices. So it is the human narration plus the AI kind of edit. What our technology is, it can actually enable the other way around, so you can actually create the whole content. We are advanced enough to give you the ability to create the whole content in a synthetic version of your voice. It's very similar to yours. Then you have the control, you can actually, if you are doing the editing, then it wouldn't be any different to your own articles. I think it's going to be a convergence of the two in terms of, I think, the near future. Joanna: In terms of right now, or at least in the next year or two, how are you selling audiobooks, distributing and selling? Obviously, for independent authors, it's not possible at the moment, but I think Deep Zen has some distribution already. What platforms are allowing AI narrated audio? Taylan: Starting from day one, we've been really careful about the quality and how we communicate with both the publishers, authors and the retailers. We wouldn't want to become something with subpar quality. So that enabled us to secure the distribution. With Deep Zen, if you produce the content with us, we can actually distribute our content to 50 different retailers and streaming services and the libraries through the distribution partnership agreements that we signed. We are actually thinking about making that available to the independent authors. If you are actually working with us and if you're getting your digitally narrated audiobook produced with us, we will be offering that distribution service through our own distribution agreements. And we can make that content available in the different platforms. So far, it will be restricted to our own distribution channel. But I think with wider acceptance, the other platforms will probably going to be accepting directly in later stages. I think the exception is Audible, so far, and I think they're also looking into it. They are a big part of the ecosystem, obviously, and they're also starting looking into how they can introduce AI generated content into the platform in the near future. Joanna: Obviously, they're owned by Amazon, and Amazon have Amazon Polly, which is another AI voice. I imagine that they might want to develop their own ecosystem. Taylan: I can't go into too much detail. There are some works in process. Joanna: I'm sure. Taylan: I think the good thing having Deep Zen available to the authors and the publishers, we are independent. The key thing is if you are going with one of these larger, bigger platforms that it comes with the conditions attached to it. So you have to make it exclusive to one platform, you can't do it in the other one. We are platform agnostic, neutral. And that's actually a good thing to give the choice back to the authors and the publishers in terms of where they want to list their content, how they can distribute their content, how they can actually maximize the value they are going to be driving from their content, their work. I'm playing a really critical role in terms of staying independent and providing that platform, the equally good technical platform to the wider publisher and author community. Joanna: I know you might not be able to answer exactly, but is there a roadmap in terms of timeline for opening up to authors? Because I feel like I've been talking about this for a few years and everyone laughs at me and says, ‘Oh, it's years and years away.' How long do you think it will be before this is possible for independent authors? Taylan: Oh, for us, basically using Deep Zen's technology you mean? Joanna: Yes. Taylan: It's very soon. We started to make it available. We built a publishing portal. So if you go to portal.deepzen.io and you can actually sign up to our portal, give your business details, upload your manuscript. And that service is actually now available. Joanna: Yes, that's the service I've just used to do two audiobooks. When would we be able to distribute through Deep Zen to the 50 retailers, for example? Taylan: We are aiming to do it before the end of the year. Joanna: Oh, great. Wow. Okay. That's amazing. Taylan: Yes. There's some infrastructure that needs to be put in place in terms of how we are going to be managing it. So there's some development work that's being currently done, but we would like to do it as soon as possible. Joanna: Well, that would be great. Then in that case, I want to ask about price because there's a couple of things with price. On the one hand, people think, ‘Oh, it should be really, really cheap to do AI voice,' where, of course, it's technology and it's got a lot of value. So even though it might be cheaper than necessarily hiring a famous narrator, it's still got costs. So that's the cost on the one hand, will that come down? And on the other hand, the pricing, is there an expectation that the pricing of an AI narrated audiobook should be cheaper because it's not a human? What's happening with both the costs and the revenue when it comes to AI? Taylan: In terms of the cost structure on our side, the human input part, we have two tiers of services. The first one is if you want the quality QC process, if you would like to give inputs and if you want us to change and make edits on the book, then it requires a rigorous process with the editors and it increases the cost on our side. Currently, it's around $100 per finished hour, $100 to $130, that price range. And the majority is actually the human editing, which is involved in that. But now we are getting confident to a level that we can actually eliminate some of that process. Especially for the nonfiction, the content is actually good enough to be distributed with minimal human touch. We will be enabling the price point to come down to around $50 per finished hour, $40 to $50 range that we are looking into. But that service wouldn't have the same QC process, but we will be doing the lexicons or the pronunciation is going to be perfect. But small changes maybe, like, if you want to pause after certain words, variable detailed editing, that won't be available, you need to rely on the machine's accuracy. We are actually getting very confident that with the minimal input, we can get a really high-quality output from that, which we will be passing the savings to the customers. In terms of the pricing, whether it should be cheaper, the AI content, not necessarily. I think the value of the content, the intellectual value and how it is produced are a little bit separate things. Ultimately if you think about it, the availability and the choice, I think price was one of the barriers that actually stopped more content being available. My expectation is as we pass along these savings then it will be more feasible to break even and start making money with a smaller number of copies that are sold, which will actually help the authors and the publishers to price them more reasonably. So they will be probably more competitive. That's how I'm thinking. Long term, it will help the price points to come down while actually keeping the same amount of returns to the publishers. Joanna: I think there's going to be a lot of different options within the next few years, and that will change, but I agree with you. I think the content is one thing. The other thing I'm interested in is I used to think that we were trying to replicate human voice and, obviously, we are trying to replicate emotion and that kind of thing. I think it's important that we label things as digitally narrated, for example, and I'm even putting labels on the audiobook cover so that they can be easily recognized as digitally narrated, because I feel that's also to be embraced. There are special things about audio narration as there are special things about human narration and we don't want to try and fake it in a way. Do you think that we need to encourage this kind of different labelling in order to encourage trust from people? Or do you think it doesn't matter because people will just listen anyway? Taylan: We advise, as the best practice, to do it in the metadata, to actually label it in the way that it's synthesized with the digital voice of the narrator or the pseudonym. That's how we see it to be open and frank with the customer, with the community. I agree with you. That's something that we are recommending, and I think that showing the distinction would be probably beneficial in the long term. Joanna: Great. So we've talked a bit about what's happening right now. When do you see this being completely accepted by both the publishing industry and by listeners? Are we talking 5 years, 10 years? When will AI narration be mainstream? Taylan: A couple of years, I don't think that it will take five years. I think it will be probably with different use cases, probably more on the fiction side. We've been working on this for three, four years now and we see the reports. The content is consumed in libraries, and on different platforms. People are actually paying for it. So I think it's just the mindset and also probably the bigger platforms and the publishers are slowly adopting it. Maybe the change should come from the authors and the narrators that it is actually the more people are actually using it, taking the advantage. And we would like to be the platform that is actually enabling it rather than the big parties controlling it and just doing it in one go. So I think the way I see it is yeah, the next couple of years, I think it will start to emerge definitely in non-English markets because we get quite a lot of inbound requests from German publishers, French publishers. If you think about the audio, all these services are actually bringing in more people as the subscribers, users and they want to give them a good experience and people want the content in their native languages. All the studios in Germany, what we are actually hearing is they're all full all the time. Even if you want to pay premium prices and if you get the narrators, there's not enough studio capability or capacity to get your book on time. I think it will probably be an earlier adoption in non-English markets. That's what I'm expecting. And that will drive the change probably in U.S. and UK. Joanna: I totally agree with you. I think the non-English language services will want this more and then it will drive everything forward and then the rest of us will be like, ‘Yeah, we want to get involved.' Taylan: Our thinking is for the publishers. I think you can get your content in audio now in a more reasonable price point. If you are thinking about rights, we are talking about five to seven years. There are some platforms that currently you can sell your content. Also, for example, on the Audible question, once they start selling, then you will have an early start, for example, you will have your content rather than trying to get everything adopted at that stage. So I think early adoption is key in this case and it is certainly not going to be four- or five-years' time. It's going to be next year and the year after. I think we will see a big mass shift in that in a massive scale. Joanna: Excellent. I've been excited about this for years, so I'm glad it's finally happening. Where can people find Deep Zen online? Where can everyone find you? Taylan: Sure. Our web address is deepzen.io. For the authors, they can sign up to our portal, it's portal.deepzen.io. And if you have any queries, then the email is hello@deepzen.io. Joanna: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Taylan. That was great. Taylan: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Have a good day. Thank you. Bye-bye.The post Digital Narration With AI Voices With Taylan From DeepZen first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do you know when an idea is a short story, a novella, or a full-length novel? How can you turn one story into multiple streams of income? Alan Baxter talks about a long-term craft-centered approach to the author career and how his short stories have won him multiple awards. In the intro, State of Indie Authorship 2021 [Written Word Media]; Sessions from 20Books Vegas conference [YouTube]; $0 to $1K a month in book sales webinar [Nick Stephenson]; This episode is sponsored by my Black Friday Promotion. You can get 30% off my ebooks, audiobooks, and courses when you buy direct. Use coupon: 2021 at Payhip.com/thecreativepenn for ebooks and audiobooks (here's how to apply it), and TheCreativePenn.com/learn for my courses. Valid until end 31 Dec 2021. Alan Baxter is the multi-award-winning author of horror, supernatural thrillers, and dark fantasy across more than 20 books as well as many more short stories. He's also a martial arts instructor and his latest book for writers is The Martial Art of Writing. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Multiple streams of income from short stories, and tracking your intellectual propertyWhen is an idea a short story vs a novella or a novel? Does short fiction help to sell longer work?Award submissions and a long-term approachHow writing is like martial arts You can find AlanBaxter at AlanBaxterOnline.com and on Twitter @AlanBaxter Transcript of Interview with Alan Baxter Joanna: Alan Baxter is the multi-award-winning author of horror, supernatural thrillers, and dark fantasy across more than 20 books as well as many more short stories. He's also a martial arts instructor and his latest book for writers is The Martial Art of Writing. Welcome back to the show, Alan. Alan: Thanks for having me again. It's good to chat with you. Joanna: We've been doing this once every couple of years for a decade now. Alan: I know, such a long time. Joanna: It is. And of course, you were one of the first people I met on Twitter and we've talked over the years, but we've never met in person, which is kind of crazy. Alan: I know. Joanna: Give us a bit of an overview of your writing career because you've really combined traditional publishing, indie, co-writing your own book, short stories, novellas. Give us a potted history of how your author career has unfolded. Alan: This is sort of difficult to put into a snapshot, but the short version is I started indie back in the day. Well, I started trying to get a traditional deal on my first novel. And I got an agent, did all that stuff. Twice it went to acquisitions and twice it didn't quite make it. This was right in the early days of Lulu for self-publishing and right in the early days of e-books. My first book is on Smashwords and the end of the Smashwords' URL for e-books is the number of the book it is and they're up into the multimillions now. My first book is number 378. So I was kind of there in the early days of that. That went okay. Subsequently, I've been working with small press. I've got a trilogy with HarperCollins here in Australia. I've got novellas and short stories collected and published by various small press and indie publishers. And I still keep a hand in a little bit dabbling with some self-publishing bits and pieces here and there as well. I'm a big believer in hybrid and having many threads to the bow. I co-write with David Wood as well. We write cult thrillers and monster thrillers, he and I together. And the 3rd Eli Carver book is coming out in December and I think that's my 25th book. Joanna: And people always say, ‘Why don't you know exactly how many books you've written?' And I'm like, ‘Well, you know, it gets difficult with reprints and new editions and things.' Alan: Yeah, that's it. And then what do you count? There's a novella that was published in the U.K. that was a book that was published that was in the book count, but it was a limited edition hardcover that's now in a sort of a collected edition that sold out. Still available as an e-book, but do I count that or do I not count that? At some point, that'll go into a future collection as well probably. It gets a bit muddy, but I like the way you put it, more than 20 books. That's usually an easy way to put it. Joanna: You're also a really prolific short story writer. And that is a totally different kind of kettle of fish, I think, in terms of management of how many stories. Do you know how many short stories you've written? Alan: It's more than 80 that are published now. There's a variety. And again, some were published in magazines or in online journals that are no longer available that might have subsequently been republished. I've got two short story collections out. ‘Crow Shine' and ‘Served Cold' are both collecting across the more than a decade that I've been writing short stories. And so I think overall in original publications, it's 80-something now. Most of those are available in most places. And if they're not in a collection, they're on my Patreon, or they're going to be in a future collection or something. Joanna: So with short stories, in particular, but also with other projects, how do you track your intellectual property? I have some short stories, but very few. And I have a file structure, but I also don't submit to publications or publishers as you do. How do you track your creation and where you send things and the licensing and all of that? Alan: Generally speaking when selling short stories to magazines and anthologies, the general principle with the contract is that they'll buy the story and they'll have an exclusive publication period where you can't publish that same story anywhere else. That's usually 12 months. After that, they retain the right to continue publishing that anthology or whatever. You could pull your rights at that point, but usually, obviously, you want publishers to keep their books available, you want your stories to be found by future readers and whatever else. So they continue to publish the story, but the rights revert. At that point, I could include it in a collection, or I could put it on my Patreon page for Patreons to have a new story to read that they might not have seen in the original publication or anything like that. I've got a file where I've got listed all the stories that I've sold and where they've sold to and the date and the contract so I know what date the rights revert to me. So those stories will continue to exist in those original publications. But then if someone comes to me and asks for a reprint, or if someone comes and asks if they can do a podcast of one of those stories, or periodically I'll go through and see what has come back to me in terms of rights reversion and then I'll approach them, podcasters, because you can sell short stories multiple times. This is one of the good things about it. You might sell it to a magazine, you might sell it as a reprint, you might sell it again to a podcast for an audio, then you could potentially put it on Patreon. Eventually, you might put it in a collection and then you can sell the collection. So short stories tend to work well. One of my hardest working short stories has paid me probably six or seven times for the same story. And obviously, that's the stories that are popular and that you can resell like that. But that's the option that you have. So really, it's a case of making sure that anyone who does reprint that story does so with the right to do it, that they pay for the privilege of it. But after that initial sale, once that rights reversion comes back, then you can do what you like with it. So that exclusive period is never usually more than a year. Joanna: Yes, the opportunities with shorts are fascinating to me. But how do you find the right opportunities to submit either to magazines or anthologies and also for podcast fiction you mentioned? I always find it quite confusing and there are so many possibilities. It seems hard to weed them out. Do you have a list of places to submit or is there a place where people can go to find the latest things? Alan: It is a bit daunting at first. Same as anything, the more you do it, the more used to it you get. Once you know the genre that you write in and the kind of markets that are out there, there's always that top echelon of market where, always submit from the top down. You try to get the best pay rate, first of all. When that gets rejected, you work your way down through the list because it's incredibly hard to crack the really pro markets. But there's various places. There's a website called Submission Grinder where you can put searches in to see what publications, magazines, anthologies, whatever, accepting what sort of stories and what guidelines they might have. There's another one you can subscribe to called Duotrope, which is another one that you can track your submissions through it as well. They make it quite a good automated process now, but you can also see what's happening and who's looking for stories. And you just become familiar with the good places that are publishing stories. Every once in a while, you'll see that ‘Nightmare Magazine' or ‘PseudoPod,' the podcast or whatever, have opened to submissions again. So if you've got original work that hasn't sold, you can take advantage of that submission window. Of course, a lot of podcasts, they're happy if it's been in print because that's a different medium. They're audio, so they don't care if it's been in print. They'll reprint it as audio. Sometimes they're open all the time for that different podcast. Obviously, everyone's got different submission guidelines. But after a while, you do get across who's doing what in your genre and things like keeping an eye on Twitter and stuff, keeping in touch with publishers and other writers. We're always really happy to share, ‘Hey, have you seen this is open for submissions?' It's always good to keep an eye open and see what's coming up and if a new publisher crops up or a new anthology gets announced or stuff like that. But Duotrope and Submission Grinder, in particular, are really useful websites for finding out what's out there in the first place. Joanna: I feel like in the indie community, in particular, there is a ‘feeling' that writing a book is always a better idea because it's longer. If you're in KU, you get more page reads. You can charge more if you're selling it. But it feels like, to me, selling a short story on something like Kindle or Kobo as a single story is not the way to think about it. Obviously, you mentioned getting paid for the one-year license or whatever. It's not a massive amount of income, but do you find it also markets your longer work? Do you feel like readers of your short fiction come into your novels? Alan: Definitely. I've always loved short stories. I've always been a real fan of them. Roald Dahl short stories for adults when I was 12 years old did my head in and I discovered this amazing world of short fiction. But I never really thought of myself as a short fiction writer. I was always thinking as a novelist. But then the idea that writing short stories, getting short stories published helps to get your name out there and helps to draw attention to your longer works. And your novel works was something that I approached it from in the first place. And then subsequently started to really enjoy the craft because a short story and a novel are not the same. The beginning, middle, and end, you need the conflict, blah, blah, blah. The basic principles of storytelling are there. But in terms of craft, they're quite different beasts. I really enjoyed the process of getting good at short stories. And I began to really enjoy the thrill of selling stories and seeing my stories and my name on the cover of anthologies and stuff like that. And it does do really good work for just getting your name out there. A number of people over the years have hit me up in one way or another and basically said, ‘I saw this story in this anthology. I loved it. What other work do you have?' Or I've had emails saying, ‘I just found your website because I read so and so magazine and you've got so much great work. I can't wait to check out your novels.' So it does work like that. It's this kind of multi-pronged approach to building a readership, to building an audience. Joanna: Do you think that might also help indie authors move into what I guess is more of readers who might read more traditionally because a lot of these short story anthologies are done by small press or things like that? Have you found that it's a good crossover between the indie and traditional worlds? Alan: Definitely. Editors, particularly independent press and small press editors, are always on the lookout for people, for new voices and stuff like that. And generally speaking, readers don't have much of an interest, whether you are traditionally published or indie published or whatever. The general readership in terms of the people who just see a book they like and read it and enjoy it, they don't really care how it got to them. A lot of the time you're just building a readership where they recognize your name as an author, not necessarily your name as an indie author, or as a short fiction author, or as a tried published author or anything like that. They just see the name go, ‘Oh, I like that person's writing.' The more places you can drop your work that might catch someone's eye, the better. And from an indie point of view, if you do sell to anthologies and magazines, there's nothing to stop you after that exclusivity period is over, 6 months or 12 months. There's nothing to stop you then putting that story out on Kindle or KU as a short story for 99 cents, or to put your stories together and independently release your own collection of short stories to just add to your catalog, if you like, and add to your opportunity to reach readers. So the whole process crosses back and forth. There's no need to stay in one area or in one field. Joanna: You mentioned they're very different crafts, the short stories and longer works. How do you know when an idea will be a short story or how do you know when it will turn into something longer like a novella or a novel? Alan: It's an interesting thing, isn't it? People quite often ask. Honestly, it's just kind of a feel having done it a lot. In general, speaking for me, I tend to find that a novel idea will be when several, two, three, at least different ideas that are complementary, they kind of crash together in a certain way, and I realize how I can use several ideas together and I'm like, ‘Oh wow, that's a book.' And that may be a novella, may be a novel, but it's a bigger thing. Whereas a short story will often be more of a single idea or exploring a single point. In some ways, a short story is a bit like really tightly focusing a lens down onto a story. So you don't have a lot of backstory, subplots, secondary characters. You're just really zooming in on this closer idea, even if you're telling a big story, which you can in short fiction, of course. But it tends to just be that more tightly focused lens. And so usually, it comes from that, what sort of vibe of story I'm going to tell. But I don't always get it right. I mentioned the Eli Carver books earlier on. The first one of those, I was writing a short story for a particular submission call. I had this cool idea of basically this opening scene of how to start this short story. I started writing it and by the time I was a couple of thousand words into it, I was like, ‘Oh, I've hardly begun. This is actually a really massive idea.' And it all grew in my mind and I was, ‘Oh, okay, this is actually going to be a novel. Oh, fantastic. I'll have to write something else for this anthology. I think I've got a novel idea here.' As it turned out, it came in at about 38,000 words or whatever. It turned out to be a good size novella and had subsequently sold to Grey Matter Press. And now we are on the third novella in that ongoing novella series comes out in December. So that was when I got it totally wrong. I thought it was a short story. I decided actually this is a novel and it turned out to be a novella. But that's unusual. Normally, I get it right because I have a feel for the sort of thing that I'm writing. When it comes to short stories, especially if you're writing for a submission call where there's a themed anthology or something like that, they tend to trigger these ideas and things that you want to explore with this tighter focus. And I tend to overwrite a lot and then edit back. It's not unusual for me to sell a 5,000-word story that was 8,000 or 9,000 words in first draft. Joanna: I've got to come to your awards because you have like a whole shelf of awards at this point. ,Alan Baxter's Award shelf, oct 2021. Photo by alan baxter Alan: I don't have that many. Joanna: You do have quite a few! Alan: I've got a few. Joanna: You have a few. And what are those for? Are they for short stories or for novels? Have you noticed anything different about your award-winning work than your other work, or is it just a matter of that was the taste of the judges at that time? Alan: The latter, I think. The taste of the judges, it does tend to change a lot. There's three main national awards in Australia, the Aurealis Awards, the Australian Shadows Awards, and the Ditmar Awards. I've been a finalist in all three of those awards quite a few times each. And in all three of those awards, I've been a finalist for novel and for long fiction, which tends to be novella length stuff, and for short fiction, and for collection. I've been very fortunate to have had my work recognized like that and been nominated on all lengths. The awards that I've actually won are for novella short stories and collections. So despite the several nominations, I haven't actually won an award for a novel yet, and this is the nature of being a writer because like you said, I've got a few awards sitting on the shelf there and I'm still sitting here going, ‘Yeah, but I haven't got one for a novel yet,' which it kind of bugs me, it's kind of annoying. Even though I've had several that have been shortlisted, I just haven't won, which is honestly just making a shortlist, say, like five or six works from everything that year and your book's on that shortlist, that's amazing. To win is something special, but just getting shortlisted is fantastic. But it really does seem to be kind of a taste thing. The Ditmar Awards are fan-voted awards. So that can be as much how well-known you are, a bit of a popularity contest rather than genuinely quality work. And some awards do operate a bit like that. The Aurealis Awards and the Shadows Awards are both judged. So that's a judging panel, reading everything and deciding what they think is best. That's a different vibe, a different kind of award. And I've got four of those now, the Australian Shadows Award, which is pretty exciting. They're the awards specifically for horror and dark fiction in Australia. So that seems to be where I get most recognized at this point. Joanna: And I think the whole award thing, I feel like it's something I consider important and I haven't won for anything for my fiction. I've been in the shortlist and everything, but it's one of my goals. It's actually submitting to things there as well, isn't it? It's not just waiting for something to happen. Alan: That's right. There are some people whose work goes a bit ballistic and we all want that kind of breakout book or that breakout recognition. And some people, they write this great book and it just goes super popular and you're like, ‘Well, that's going to sweep awards.' You just know it's going to get noticed sort of regardless because it's caught the zeitgeist or whatever. Generally speaking, there's that much work out there that for the vast majority of us, if you don't, or if your publishers don't send your work in for consideration in the awards, then you're definitely not going to win or get shortlisted. So it is a case of sort of being across them and because I write horror and dark fiction, there's two awards that are very much for me, they're sort of the ultimate. There's the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award. I've been long-listed for the Stoker before, but I haven't won it yet. And that's one that I'm sort of really like, ‘Man, I'd love to win a Stoker one day'. But again, it's a case of they need to be aware of the work. The more your profile rises and the more people are reading your work, then the more possibility there is that the general reading public is going to do the job for you, but you also just need to push your own self as well. And with the Stokers, you can submit work to the jury for consideration. So rather than rely on hoping that they see it, you can actually send work in so that they definitely see it. That gives you a better chance because at least you know the jury's going to read it that way. There's no guarantee they'll read it. They might do. They'll probably read everything by Stephen King, but that's not the vast majority of us. So, yeah, you do have to play the game. And it is a great validation of work and it's a great recognition and it definitely does help to get more readers because I know several times it's been said to me that a lot of people, they love when the award shortlists are announced. They don't really care who wins. When the shortlists are announced, they go out shopping because they're like, ‘Oh, this is the quality stuff from last year.' So if they're really into horror and the Aurealis Award shortlist is announced and there's six novels on the best horror novel category, they'll go out and buy those six books because they're like, ‘I want to read the stuff that's really good right now.' So it's just that kind of marketing, if you like. You can't buy it. Joanna: Oh, totally. I shop from the Bram Stoker list as well. Alan: Yeah, me too. Joanna: It's kind of like because I also feel like horror as a genre is…I don't want to say superior, but it has some incredible art as well, I guess, speculative fiction. It often has some really interesting ideas. I think people who don't read horror think it's all just like slasher stuff, which it's not. And of course, it is a difficult genre and many people try and avoid saying that they write horror. I've read quite a lot of your work and you range across all kinds of different things. Do you think horror is a specific genre or is it a thread in many other genres? Alan: This is such an ongoing debate. I've leaned more into calling myself a horror writer these days partly because there was a period, as you said, a lot of people would hear horror and they'd be like, ‘Ooh, no, I don't do horror,' because they think of the slasher movies, especially of the '80s and buckets of blood and knives and gore. But that's just one small aspect of horror. Horror is such a broad church. And like the vast majority of the stuff that I write, there is some kind of horror that leans into the body horror and violence and stuff like that definitely in what I do. But there's also a lot of cosmic horror and supernatural and quiet, weird horror and all sorts of stuff like that in what I do as well, which is across the board. If people say, ‘I don't read horror,' I can just say to people like, ‘Okay, so what do you like?' And if they tell me what stuff they're into, I can go, ‘Right, read this, this and this.' And I can give 'em three horror books that will appeal to the same things because it is like that. To me, horror and comedy are both spices that you can add to any story. So while there is definitely horror as a genre, where the horror or the dark aspects of the fiction are prevalent, you can have a science fiction story, and if you look at alien, that's science fiction horror. So you can have a romance, if there's a ghost, that's gothic horror. It's the sort of thing that intertwines that much that you can't really say that it's definitely a genre or it's definitely not because it becomes so intertwined with things, which is true for a lot of genres. There are certain genres where there are certain conventions that you need to have. If you've got fantasy, then it needs to have some kind of fantastical elements. If you've got science fiction, it needs to have some kind of future science element because that's kind of by definition what it does. If it's horror, it's got to have some sort of dark element, horror and dark fiction is like that. But it can apply to any other genre. I've never met a genre I didn't like. I tend to cram as many as I can into any given book and story. There's elements of fantasy and supernatural and horror and crime and mystery and in most of my books. So, yeah, it's a very difficult question to really answer, I think. Joanna: And I guess it's not so much for us as writers because we do tend to range across different things, especially, like you, I write across different genres, subgenres. But readers will stay with one genre that they love this type of book. And if it's not that type of book, they might not try it. I feel like that's the challenge for cross-genre writers, is not so much what we write, but more finding readers. Marketing is a fun thing. Alan: Oh, is it? Joanna: Yeah, and I know that you primarily concentrate on craft and you've always done that. What do you do for marketing and what might have changed over the last decade in terms of marketing? Alan: Honestly, it's a weird thing. Part of it is recognizing what you do and where things might appeal. For example, if I know someone is really into crime and thrillers, then I'll suggest that they read Devouring Dark or the Eli Carver books. If I know that they're into fantasy, I'll suggest they read Hidden City or the Alex Kane books because I'm aware of where the genres lean a bit more one way or the other in the books that I do. So at the first level of marketing, that's always a good thing to do and as well being able to say, ‘Well, if you like this, you'll like that,' is another kind of thing. Who you write a bit like, even if…I quite often get comparisons to Clive Barker, which is a massive boost to my ego. But it's also really useful to say to people, ‘Well, if you like Clive Barker, you'll like this.' Everybody who says they write dark fiction, they get, ‘Is this the next Stephen King?' Let's stop comparing people to Stephen King because King is the King, but we can't all be the next Stephen King. A lot of it is finding that comparative market that you can put yourself in. But as well, I think, especially as a career develops, there's the old cliche that the best marketing is to write the next book because it's hard as hell to promote one book. It gets much easier to promote 10. But it starts to build a vibe around you as a writer. I've been at this long enough now that it seems a lot of people are into Alan Baxter books when they read my work rather than necessarily being sold the book itself. So I get that base level of readership that then hopefully keeps talking about it and recommending it. Every time you bring a new book out, then you hopefully get a few new readers that come along, ‘Oh, what's this? This looks interesting.' And then there are other people around going, ‘Oh yeah, you've gotta check this out.' And it's that snowball effect. I've found that otherwise it really is down to being out there and being genuine and being yourself and choosing the platforms that work for you because it's very easy. There's just so many people now embracing TikTok, for example. I've had a little noodle around on there because there's some books that are just going viral. They're going ballistic because they get sudden attention on TikTok. And it is definitely the new thing, especially among younger readers, people that are doing more work to promote through TikTok. But if it doesn't work for you, don't do it because it's going to come across as just lame and not genuine. So you need to find the sort of few platforms that do work for you and just be there and be yourself and be genuine and, as far as I'm concerned, promote everything else so that people just are aware of you and what you do. It gets to a point where they're like, ‘This person promoted that book and I liked it and he promoted that book and I liked it. I might read one of his books.' And that feedback loop also works. Joanna: I haven't bothered with TikTok. I really decided a couple of years ago that I prefer audio. Audio is my primary marketing medium, I guess. I'd rather not do any kind of video platform. You have to choose, as you say. What do you choose in terms of your marketing? Alan: I've settled really well with Twitter. I don't know why, but it just really vibes for me. I think there's a really strong writing and reading community there, which is good, especially in genre fiction. There's really strong communities of readers and reviewers as well as writers. And like with any social media, you just have to curate your feed aggressively. The mutant block buttons get a lot of work because there's a lot of idiots out there and it's best just to shut 'em down. The block is very useful for that. I find that Twitter is a really good medium for sharing information, finding out about things, and promoting stuff that's going on. I do have a Facebook page still, but I'm really no fan of Facebook. I have ethical issues around Facebook in the first instance, but I also find it just kind of frustrating as a platform because so little of what you potentially put out there gets in front of other people's eyes. I do like Instagram as well. I find that works well for sharing stuff around and having something visual as well that works. And then I've recently been just focusing a little bit more on my email list and my Patreon because you know that what you've got there is a dedicated fan base that are genuinely interested in what you're doing. If they're subscribing to your newsletter, or they're paying at some level of your Patreon, then you know that they're engaged and that they want information. And so you hope that if you cater well to them, then that propagates out as well and that feeds out. So that's what seems to work. I'm fairly new to Patreon, but that's sort of what's working for me. I make a point of having a very strong personal website as well. My website is well-developed. That's the one place I control. Twitter could disappear one day overnight potentially or anything else. So you've got to have a place that's your own. I keep my website strong and I can sell direct through there as well. And otherwise, those are the platforms that seem to work best for me. Joanna: I think website, email lists have to be the fundamentals. We've always focused on that. And then one or two other places that you might reach out to. And of course, we met on Twitter, I think because we got on there early. I think it was 2009 or something, 2010. Alan: 2009. Yes. I had a course to check relatively recently. November 2009, it was when I started on Twitter. Joanna: I would've met you probably around then because I was also in Australia and early indie community. It's funny that those of us who started on Twitter early still love Twitter. Alan: It's interesting, isn't it? And quite longevity, really. Joanna: Yes. Well, on longevity, we're almost out of time. Possibly my final question. You've been writing a long time, over a decade now, and you've done all these different things. What are your tips for writers who want to maintain a career for the long term? Because both of us, again, we've seen people blaze into the community and then disappear because of trying to go too hard too soon, or whatever, or be disappointed by writing something that they thought was going to change the world and then doesn't. How do you maintain this writing career for the long term? Alan: It's a good question, isn't it? Honestly, I think the most important attribute is just to be bloody-minded because it's a thankless gig. You don't make much money at it, especially early on. And some people just land and hit the ground running. Generally speaking, you have to plug away for a long time, you have to develop your craft, you have to build a readership, you have to build people's awareness of what's going on out there, you have to keep putting work out. And a lot of the time along the way, you're going to get negative feedback, you're going to get a lot of rejection and all that sort of stuff. So it really is, in the first instance, just being bloody-minded and I'm the determinator. So you're just determined enough to just push on regardless because if you've got the passion to do it and you've got the stories that you want to tell and you're like, ‘Okay, I'm going to keep writing these stories. I'm going to keep doing the best job I can of it. And I'm going to keep working to get better and better at it if I can. And I'm just going to be too stubborn basically to quit.' Really when it comes down to it, the only difference between published and unpublished writers or people who are still writing after X years and people who aren't is the ones who are still doing it are the ones who just didn't quit and they just kept doing it. It's having that discipline to improve and then that focus on wanting to get good at craft and to just take every little positive uptick as good motivation and to grit your teeth every time you get kicked and carry on anyway, which is not an easy thing. It marries up with that whole martial arts philosophy really. You've gotta have the discipline to train every day and to practice every day. And every once in a while, you're going to get your ass kicked, but you just keep going. That's the principle. That becomes the lifestyle. Joanna: I think the thing with martial arts as well, you don't win straight off in your first bout or whatever, and you don't get good at something within your first year. I feel like so much of the frustration amongst authors is, “My first novel or my first book didn't do anything”. As you said, it does get easier as you've been doing this for years and you build up your body of work and it definitely does get easier over time in some way, right? Alan: Yes. You get better at it as well and you get more used to how it goes. And you get better doing a good job of it sooner so it doesn't take you so long to do a good job each time. All this does marry with the martial arts. They're both very similar. That's why The Martial Art of Writing is published. That parallel of the principles involved of the two lives are basically the same. I frequently have people who turn up to classes, at least non-COVID times when there are classes, and they'll show up. I've been doing martial arts for longer than I've been writing, 40 years, I've been involved in martial arts. You very quickly get to recognize that it's one of those people. They turn up to a class and they look around and they expect that you're going to tell them a bunch of secrets. And within a few weeks, they're just going to be like Bruce Lee bouncing off the walls. And it's like, ‘Well, I can absolutely tell you a whole bunch of stuff. That is not a secret, it's just that's the knowledge.' And you can know that intellectually as much as you like. But until you've put in 10,000 hours of practice, you're not going to be Bruce Lee. I can teach you how to throw a punch and a kick and I can teach you all the principles of good mechanics that are involved, but you've gotta do it again and again and again to get good at it. And that's what it always boils down to. You've gotta do the hard work. So if you've got a good teacher or a good mentor or whatever, fantastic, because they can help you do smart work, but you've still gotta do the hard work. That's the same with the writing. Just because you wrote a book, good on you, that's brilliant. A lot of people want to write a book and don't, or a lot of people think they're going to, never do. The fact that you finished a book is fantastic. It's a great achievement. But it's your first book, might not be any good. Might be really great, but still, nobody knows about you. So you've still got to put in the work. You've still gotta keep going. Joanna: And it helps if you enjoy the journey. I think that's important too. Alan: You have to. If you don't like what you're doing, find something else because there is a great deal of satisfaction and pride to slowly building a readership and an audience and getting whatever publishing credits or scoring an award shortlist or whatever; this stuff is all absolutely fantastic. In the general scheme of things, it comes along incredibly infrequently, even when you've been doing it for like more than a decade like 15 years or so, close to that I have, the wins are still very few and far between. So they're great when they start coming, but you've got to love the process because you'll lose your motivation quickly otherwise. Joanna: Absolutely. That's what it always comes back to that a lot of authors get so obsessed with marketing that they forget this is primarily a craft, this is about the craft, for the long term, it has to be because otherwise, as you say, you'll go completely nuts. So I will look forward to another decade of reading your work and catching up with you every now and then. Where can people find you and your books online? Alan: The two best places to catch up with me, my website is easy to find, it's just my name, alanbaxter.com.au. So you can find that easy enough, alanbaxter.com.au. And I'm on Twitter @AlanBaxter. If you just kind of want to say hi, swing by. Every once in a while, I say something stupid on Twitter and my notifications go bananas and I miss a lot. But otherwise, yeah, I usually spend a lot of time on Twitter. It's always fun to catch up with people and stuff. So, to find out about me and the books, go to the website and you'll find everything you need there, and all the various other social media links are on the website too. Joanna: Great. Well, thanks so much for your time, Alan. That was brilliant. Alan: No worries. Thanks for having me. It's always great to chat to you. And one day, we will get to meet in person. One day. Joanna: We will. One day.The post Short Stories As The Basis To An Award-Winning Author Career With Alan Baxter first appeared on The Creative Penn.

The relentless news about climate change can leave us despondent — but what if we can use fiction to help people with positive ideas of what the future could look like and the actions we can take to change things? Denise Baden talks about the power of eco-fiction and explains the Green Stories Novel Prize, sponsored by Orna Ross. Denise Baden is Professor of sustainable business at the University of Southampton in the UK. She's also a screenwriter and novelist and founded the series of Green Stories Writing Competitions. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How stories can change mindsHow to smuggle green ideas into stories rather than preachingWhat is eco-fiction?The Green Stories Novel and Short Story CompetitionsEnvironmental issues in publishing Click here to check out the Green Stories Novel Award and remember, there are short story awards and more, so even if the novel one isn't for you, maybe enter something else! You can find Denise Baden at DABaden.com and on Twitter @DABadenauthor Transcript of Interview with Denise Baden Joanna: Denise Baden is a professor of sustainable business at the University of Southampton in the UK. She's also a screenwriter and novelist and founded the series of Green Stories Writing Competitions. Welcome, Denise. Denise: Hello, nice to be here. Joanna: Oh, great to talk to you about this topic. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and also sustainability and environmental issues. Denise: I've had a bit of a butterfly background. I actually worked as a sales rep for publishers many years ago. But I couldn't do that once I became a mum, so I went back to university and I did a bit of psychology. I was harassing them on their green policies and not having a recycling bin. So when the person teaching business ethics, which is one of the things we're also doing, left, I got put in charge of that, and then I ended up doing stuff on sustainability. So that's my academic career, and also I've done articles on that. I think I was inspired to be a greeny by a fictional book myself, which is why I'm quite interested in writing fiction. So I read Stark. It must have been back in the early '90s by Ben Elton. Joanna: Oh, me too. I remember that one. Denise: I'm not sure if it still stands the test of time, but I thought it was brilliant at the time. It was really fun. And right in the middle of this love story epic adventure, he says something like, ‘Dave was a water birth, but he died soon after being born.' It turns out that Dave is a dolphin that got caught up in a tuna net. And I thought, ‘Hang on a minute. I can buy dolphin-friendly tuna.' I never would have chosen to read a green-themed book. I read for fun. But that really made me think and I think it awakened my green conscience. I realized what we're doing without really realizing it. It had loads of examples like that. And it gave me the idea that perhaps I might like to write fiction and perhaps smuggle green issues in myself. Joanna: I love that. And I think it's so important what you said. We read for fun. And if people haven't read Ben Elton, his books are funny. Well, most of them. His more recent ones are less funny, but his early ones are really funny. And you're right. Reading for fun. We read for escape. And the news is, let's face it, full of pretty dire stuff and people feel anxiety around the environment and just feel like it's too big. So obviously, you did psychology as well, which is great. Why are stories a good way to, like you said, smuggle these ideas in? Denise: Everyone turns to science as a way to address the climate crisis, but I think it's stories that engage our imaginations. It's stories that enable us to see things from other points of view, especially things like sci-fi and ones set in the future. They also say how things could be. I think it's a real shame that actually a lot of stories set in the future are dystopian, because we think, ‘I don't want to go there.' And I thought, wouldn't it be nice if we had some stories set in the future that were utopian, that gave us a positive vision we could aspire to perhaps. I love stories, and I also think, because I teach in the area of sustainability, you're always talking to the same people. So you're teaching those who have chosen to take that course and people who are putting the word out about climate crisis and so on. They're only reaching those who are choosing to watch that. We're preaching to the converted all the time. I quite like the idea of using fiction to engage a wider audience, and also, perhaps focus a little bit more on what we can do rather than just on what's wrong. If you know what I mean. Joanna: I'm still reading, because it's got many levels, The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Have you read that one? Denise: I have. Yes. It's an epic book. Joanna: It is epic. It's massive. But I feel like that book has made a big impact on me. I feel like I was halfway there on many of these things, but it is actually what he talks about, for example, with his carbon credit system. The way he talks about it in the future. I've been getting into this cryptocurrency side of things. Denise: I know. I've been trying to follow you. Joanna: It was interesting because reading his book, I suddenly understood how a carbon credit economy could emerge that actually made sense. And what's so brilliant about his writing, he's obviously delved down into the research, but then turned it into a story. And it's like you said. It's not the facts and figures that actually engage us. We actually couldn't care that… The 1.5 degree, like, people don't know what that means. But like at the beginning of The Ministry of the Future, if you have this heatwave, and you describe it, that just makes a lot more of an impact, doesn't it? It's taking those facts and figures and turning them into characters and stories. Denise: It's a great example because he imagines there was a Ministry for the Future and what it might do and he gets glaciologists on it, economists, sociologists, scientists, and they're all working together. And at heart, it's actually quite optimistic. There are tragedies in it, but overall, we kind of crack it. The only issue I had, and actually, Joanna, and I'm so glad you brought it up because I consider you the expert on this, is one of his solutions is based on blockchain technology as a way to leverage finance towards low carbon solutions. But my understanding of cryptocurrency is it's about 1000 times more energy-intensive than normal currency. Now, I understand that's being dealt with. But simply switching to a renewable energy supplier for that won't really crack it because we've got a supply issue as well as a demand issue with renewable energy. Do you have a view on that? Joanna: Well, as you said, and I recently shared on the show, there are carbon-negative blockchains at this point, which I think is absolutely fascinating. I can't speak to the technology on it, but what I do know is many of the people involved in cryptocurrency and digital currencies are younger people who absolutely want to save the planet. I think about it now, and also I'm into the AI side, what I think is that some of the smartest people on the planet are now thinking about this and do care about this. So that's why reading someone like Kim Stanley Robinson is good because obviously, he's a very smart dude who does a lot of research but then turned it into a story. I always think with cryptocurrency and blockchain and all of this stuff, you don't necessarily need to know how it works technically to think that it might be a way of doing things differently in the future. And that's what we've got to think, isn't it? We've got to do things differently and try and make decisions in that way. But just coming back to stories in particular. Tell us about your novel, Habitat Man. You call it eco-fiction as well as romantic comedy. So tell us about the book. What is eco-fiction anyway? Denise: Eco-fiction typically is quite doom-laden, most of it. I don't think it has to be, but it typically is. It often imagines that some terrible things have happened. We've messed up our planet and now we live in this post-apocalyptic world with no bees or nature. And so it's quite alarmist. I wouldn't like to read it. I'm afraid I'm very frivolous when it comes to my reading matter. But I mean, not all of them are like that. Some of them just have very strong nature themes. I think that The Call of the Wild is a classic by Jack London perhaps, and I think Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver is about butterflies and climate change and the human drama at the center of it. But most of it is quite dystopian, I would say. I call mine eco-fiction I guess because the aim of it is to try and share green solutions via fiction. The book is really inspired by a real-life ecologist who retired and he set up this green garden consultancy. You pay 10 pounds to the local transition network and he'll come around and advise you on how to make your garden wildlife-friendly. He gave me so many wonderful tips and I just really wanted to share them with a wider group of people. I also thought what a lovely premise for a story because he visited all kinds of back gardens and his first client, he falls in love. He digs up a body. He creates habitats for the wizard of Woolston for bats and frogs and Dawn the polyamorist who wants hedgehogs. So there's a lovely opportunity to meet a variety of characters. And very naturally, through the process of the stories smuggle in green solutions, because they're all in my head. I research it and it's quite frustrating when you get an article out and maybe three, maybe four people might read it, and they'll misquote it. So I already know that I've affected people and people have said, ‘Oh, I didn't know this. I didn't know that.' And so on. For example, I've happened to know that we're very worried about our barren soil and the lack of life and microorganisms in the soil. Is it pesticides? Is it slug pellets? One of the things it seems to me is pet treatments like fleas treatments and wormers. Now, not many people know that. My heroine has a dog. I can easily put that in and suggest less toxic alternatives or so on. And people didn't know that. They're sort of, ‘Oh, I didn't know this. I found it in your book.' But they would never have chosen to watch a documentary on flea treatment or barren soil. Joanna: I think that's a really good point. I agree that so many of these books are dystopian, either we've destroyed everything, or it's like nature has come back and nature is now almost taken over. I read Eden by Tim Lebbon recently which is a horror eco-thriller, and they have to go into the wild nature where things have been transformed by radiation and all that. And it's really cool, but it's like, ‘Yeah, I don't really want to live in that.' You mentioned some of the simple things. I'm just starting to consider other genres, so writing in the travel genre, for example. And I guess I'm talking about walking: walking, train travel, changing ways of slow travel. There are angles that we can tackle, aren't there? In pretty much any genre. Denise: Yes. Simply choosing to show someone who's taken a green alternative, and you don't even have to play the green card. There are all kinds of reasons to want to go by train or by bike, or I've got a couple of friends who tandem right from Scotland down to Cornwall on their bike. There are lovely stories to tell there. You don't have to say, ‘Oh, they did it for the climate.' You can just have people thinking, ‘Well, that might be a nice way to do it and have an adventure.' I do often think when you come across a vegan character or green character in a book or a film, quite often, they're really preachy and annoying. I think simply showing these characters as being maybe nice would help. Joanna: Yes, I think that's important, and we're all a bit tired of the preachy and some of the more aggressive forms, I guess, of green activism. Some people will say that is entirely necessary, but again, there are different layers, as you've talked about, different layers of how people want to change their lifestyle, and that's actually super important. Even in my book, Tree of Life, I did a lot of research on trees and ended up donating money to the Tree Council for tree planting and that kind of thing because of what I discovered. Now, in the book, in the author's note, I've put, ‘This is what I discovered from the Tree Council and part of the profits are donated to it.' Hopefully no one has read that book and thought I was preaching about trees. Denise: Yes, it has to stand on its own terms. And I think you're right. There's something a little bit toxic at times in the way climate change is portrayed. It's like people are saying, ‘Don't live on this planet. The planet would be better off if you weren't here.' And that's not nice. Yes, we could walk more lightly on this beautiful earth, but some of it is quite anti-human and that that's not a nice thing for people to be reading. And I also think, how you pitch it depends on where you are. So maybe in some countries, there's still quite a lack of awareness in certain segments of the population about climate change. But I think in the UK, now, people are aware. I'm hearing surveys like the majority of young people think humanity is doomed, or wake up in the night with nightmares and eco-anxiety. So when you've got that, if you continue to raise the alarm, all you're going to do is create eco-anxiety, and perhaps alarm fatigue. Whereas if you tie it to solutions, or suggest some positive visions of what it might look like if we did it right, then I think you're taking that energy and putting it somewhere constructive. Joanna: How would we do this? For example, it's such a big thing that I would suggest people pick one thing that they particularly care about. For example, I do care about walking and slow travel. I would really like us to be able to get trains much more cheaply than fly in the UK and in Europe. So I could take that one thing, slow travel, and turn that into a story where a character does some slow travel and weave ideas in there. How would you suggest people do that? Denise: Perhaps would this be a good time, Joanna, to talk about the Green Stories Competition? Joanna: Yes, absolutely. Tell us about the Green Stories Competition Denise: Because it ties quite nicely into that. Three years ago, I was quite frustrated that everything was problem-focused in the whole green discourse and climate change debate. Very little was solution-focused. Everything was raising the alarm. Everything also was preaching to the converted. So I set up this series of Green Stories Competitions and they're free to enter. And the criteria was that writers had to, first and foremost, write an engaging story or no one's going to read it, and then either aim it at the mainstream and perhaps smuggle green solutions into the plot and the narrative, or develop a positive vision of what a sustainable society might look like. I put on the website all kinds of different solutions. People always tend to do the same ones over and over, like recycling or planting trees, but actually, there are some quite systemic things that I think we could change in society. You touched on it a little bit earlier. If we started accounting for carbon, for example, perhaps we all instead of money we had a common credit card or a personal carbon allowance, or perhaps instead of shops, we had libraries or libraries of things. So just things that might be quite systemic if you're world-building. But if you're not, you can plug stuff in probably like Habitat Man does. I've got water buckets in there, I've got green funerals, I've got green fashion, avoiding pesticides, all kinds of things just naturally in the plot. We've had 12 competitions, and the first one was a short story one and we had an anthology out from that. And now we've got one coming up, which Orna Ross, who I know is well known to you and probably your listeners, who set up the Alliance of Independent Authors, she sponsored us now for a novel competition every year, and that's coming up. The deadline is 30th of December. And we've got short story competitions coming up in the new year. The idea is that you kind of try and tie these issues to actual solutions readers can engage with. And we get quite a few entries, but I have to say, Joanna, most of them have not met the criteria, which is one of the reasons I ended up writing Habitat Man. I thought I need to show them what it looks like. For example, we probably had 20 entries about rainforest destruction, where our hero or heroine goes off and becomes an eco-warrior in Indonesia, tackling evil tree cutters. But your average reader isn't going to up sticks and head off to Indonesia. And none of them mentioned solutions. So for example, solutions might be, well, a lot of the trees are being cleared for beef crops, so perhaps giving up beef is a solution, or look where your wood comes from. If you're writing a crime thriller and there's a body, perhaps it isn't buried in a mahogany coffin, perhaps it's buried in a willow coffin, a local willow coffin that would be really good for the environment. My book has a body and it's buried in a willow coffin. I try and steer them towards the solutions. Whenever I do workshops, I do them quite regularly. I did one just yesterday actually with some 14-year-olds, and they come up with lovely ideas for stories. But when I said, ‘What actions do you want your reader to take or not take as a result of reading this,' a lot of them realized they'd only raised the issue. They hadn't actually created a story that enabled them to show solutions. It's hard because a lot of fiction we like drama, don't we? We like conflict. So writing a world where everything's lovely, doesn't really lend itself, but I had a lovely entry the other day of a detective one where… It was in a sort of a utopian society, but there's lots of issues going on. There was a doping scandal in sports. There was something else. But the detective then can go everywhere and explore this society. And there was another one where something weird happened and people got sick every time they did anything eco-unfriendly. It was a really wonderful device and then wonderful ideas such as the rich people paying other people to get sick, so to clean their house or drive their car. So there are some wonderful devices there and ideas. Joanna: Let's be clear on what you have to do for it, because obviously, this is going out in November, and the end of the award for 2021 is the end of December. So if it's a novel award, do they have to write a whole novel? What do you have to submit for the competition? Denise: Bear in mind that we're going to run this every year now, so if it's not ready for this year, maybe next year. We asked for three chapters. The first chapter, a chapter that most demonstrates your green criteria, and another chapter, preferably the final one. We don't require it to be complete, but we would expect it perhaps to be almost 50% complete because the idea is then that we take the winners and we mentor them towards publication. This is why having Orna on board is so great because she has that knowledge of the self-publishing world. I'd certainly want it sort of first draft half complete at least. Joanna: What's the website for that so people know? Denise: It's www.greenstories.org.uk. Joanna: And is it just for UK writers? Denise: No, it's open to anybody, as long as it's in English and it's not yet published. We've had entrants from Australia, from Canada, from America, from all over. And there's also the short story competition. The deadline for adult entrance is I think 21st of February, and we've got an under 18 one, which is 3rd of March and that's up to 5000 words. Joanna: Fantastic. So that sounds really good. Orna Ross on why she wanted to sponsor the Green Stories Award When Denise invited me to become the sponsor of the Green Stories Novel Prize, I was immediately intrigued. I'm the kind of novelist myself who believes in the power of fiction to affect change, to change hearts as well as minds. And it's one of the reasons I write, one of the main reasons I write. We have this huge, enormous challenge as a species, as a people. And of course, we need the politicians and the journalists and all the good people to do what they do. But the conversation about climate change can sometimes be quite fixed and narrow as sometimes we're speaking to those who are already converted and failing to reach those who are not convinced, and I think story can cut through all of this. I think through story, we can expand the conversation. We can expand our awareness of what's possible, and that's what I would most like this prize to do. There is a focus on solutions and there is also a mentoring dimension to the prize, both of which were very significant for me. I think that's really important. And so this is more about the kind of prize that will reward imaginative expansion. The book doesn't need to be completely finished. What we're looking for is the kind of talent that will both entertain, perhaps amuse or through great storytelling talent sweep us away in a way that, you know, only story can. So everything is wide open here. There's no particular genre being asked for, there's room for the most dystopian science fiction at one end of the scale, and the most ordinary everyday story around recycling or carbon offsetting or something completely prosaic at the other end of the scale. It doesn't matter what the content of the story is, provided it shifts our way of thinking about this issue and expands our sense of positive possibility. Click here to check out the Green Stories Novel Award and remember, there are short story awards and more, so even if the novel one isn't for you, maybe enter something else! Back to the interview with Denise Joanna: I also wanted to ask you more specifically about our own industry, because I mean, obviously, we're writing these stories, but then we would love to put them out in print and ship them all around the world or print them in different jurisdictions and have it as ebooks and audiobooks. What are some of the environmental issues around the publishing industry in particular? Denise: I did look into this because I really wanted to put the FSC label on my books, especially as eco theme. So that just means that the paper has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, but none of them do that. Amazon don't do that. IngramSpark don't do that. They do say that Lightning Source, IngramSpark expects each of its paper supplies to be environmentally responsible and not use paper sourced from endangered old-growth forests. It doesn't specifically do the FSC certification, and neither does Amazon. But at the same time, I think it's worth mentioning that the model of print-on-demand has so much less waste than the model of doing large print runs, quite often huge amounts are pulped or sent back, which again, has got transport costs. So I think print-on-demand has got so many advantages in terms of lack of waste. And ebooks are about 20 times more sustainable than paperbacks. The fact it's not always on FSC-certified paper is quite a minor issue really, bearing in mind they are actually looking at the forest they've got it from. And also the fact that we focus very much on ebooks is good. I did a little bit and it turns out that ebooks are about 20 times more sustainable than paperbacks, and if you've got a renewable energy provider, it'd be much more than that. Joanna: Twenty times?! Denise: At least, yeah. Joanna: Wow. That's incredible to know. I hope everyone has heard that. That's brilliant. I was thinking because I know I have to charge my device or whatever, the delivery cost is tiny, but we know that the storage costs of these things go down every year. It's difficult, because I know some people have issues with capitalism, but actually, the for-profit companies that are driving the costs down and trying to change the technology are often the ones trying to make more margins. The storage and the making of electricity, generation of electricity, and all these things. I guess that's why I'm positive about the future. I am positive. Recently with AI, DeepMind's AlphaFold, which has solved a problem humans have not been able to solve, which is protein folding, and this is going to revolutionize drug design and all of this. And I'm like, well, this is a problem humans could not solve and the AI has done it, the AI tool has done it. And DeepMind specifically want to save the world, which is awesome. So I feel more positive that we'll be able to solve some of these intractable problems because of technology and AI. And in a way, you've just said that with the ebook is 20 times more sustainable. Denise: I know. For example, I was looking at things like is it better to download something on Netflix or buy the DVD and so on. It turns out if you're watching something over and over, it's best just to have it hard copy, but if it's a one off, you're better off streaming it and keeping your camera off on talks and so on makes a big difference. If you're just listening, don't have the visuals. These things make a difference. Moving away from the massive distribution of physical stuff is generally much more eco-friendly. Joanna: I would say, just on the CD thing, surely that any of those will go into a landfill and never ever biodegrade. Surely streaming is always going to be better when it comes to the long run because you don't have anything in a landfill? Denise: Yes, I guess if you have a load of CDs or DVDs and you already have them, it's much better to watch them rather than stream something. But if you're buying from new, then yes, as in most cases, it's better to stream, and especially if you've got a renewable energy provider, your conscience is going to be much more clear on that as well. Joanna: I think this is a way that I think we want to frame it is instead of looking at the news and feeling miserable and depressed about the world ending, look at the news and do some research into things and turn that into a story that then gives you and other people hope for a change in society, and that to me seems like maybe use these things as clues as opposed to news. Denise: Certainly, speaking from my own experience, writing Habitat Man has been pure therapy, because when you're working in the area of climate change and the biodiversity crisis, it is quite a frightening world. Being able to construct my own story and basically move my characters around and have that complete control and scatter little green solutions throughout the plot, it made me feel that I was contributing something positive and making people smile at the same time, and it certainly kept me sane during lockdown. Joanna: I imagine. I always include an author's note about my research, about my thoughts, that kind of thing. Do you include an author's note about the research behind it? Denise: I've got my website. I do say when things have influenced it. For example, one of the things I talk about is turning your back garden into a meadow. I've done lots of experiments. I let one half of my lawn just grow wild and the other half I got a meadow mat. Then I found out most meadow mats or wildflower turf are backed with plastic. And I thought, well, that's not good. They say it breaks down but it doesn't. I consulted my friendly ecologist. It just breaks down into microplastics, which is even worse. So I scouted around to try and find one that didn't have a plastic back, and one promised they didn't, delivered it, and it did. So I put a blog out about that on my website and that made it into the book. Then I found out that composting toilets were supposed to be very good for the environment, so I got my own, completely fell in love with it. Great great for barbecues when you would only be champing inside the house. I've got it in my back shed. So I got a lovely chapter on that. Everything I've done I've done a little post or or whatever. I could do more, there's no doubt about it. I have probably kept my research quite separate from what I write fictionally, and you have given me the idea that perhaps there is room to tie it a little bit more together, perhaps do a few more blogs about some of the science behind some of the things that sort of are casually referred to in the book. But I didn't want to bore people in the book with too much information so I kept that quite light. Joanna: That's why I use an author's note which goes at the end after the book is finished, and I always include research there. As a reader, I love author's notes in fiction, and I always look for them and want them to be there, because a lot of the types of thrillers I read are based on scientific stuff or interesting historical research or any of this type of stuff. I always include a bibliography at the back of my novels as well. Things that I've read that have influenced the story. Again, it doesn't have to be preachy, but I think an author's note, or even you say you create a landing page on your website and then you just say at the back just in the middle of your back page, ‘If you'd like to read about the science behind this, come over to this page.' And then at least people who've read the book are directed to find out more. Denise: That's a good idea, Joanna. I think I probably might do that. A friend of mine did suggest perhaps doing a podcast where I mix up readings from the book with a little bit of chat about the story behind it. But it's just… I mean, you know yourself… Joanna: It's a lot of work. Denise: It's a question of time. I've got a sequel I'm dying to get on with. Joanna: Yes, absolutely. I think obviously, you're pitching people like me to come on podcasts and that that is a good way forward as well to talk about this topic, and I'm really glad you're doing this. I feel like it's something I want to talk about, but I also know how a lot of people just turn off. So I hope that people are still listening and it can save the planet whilst also writing good stories. Denise: Well, Habitat Man is good fun. My favorite review was from someone I bumped to while walking my dogs in the park and they said, ‘Oh, you did Habitat Man.' And they said they read it with a smile on their face all the way through and that was lovely. And I said, ‘Please put that on Amazon.' They never did, but it was still lovely to hear. Joanna: Absolutely right. Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Denise: Okay, well, my website is dabaden.com. And that's got a bit about me, a bit about Habitat Man. I've got links to my Green Stories website there as well. And there's a link to where you can buy my book. At the moment, it's available on Amazon, ebook, paperback. I've got an audiobook narrator as we speak working on the audiobook version. Because I did a book launch the other day and it was so delightful to hear other people read sections. I just said, ‘Come along and read the bit you like best.' And it was so lovely. It came alive in other people's voices. So I've got to do an audiobook. So that hopefully you'll be ready by the end of the year and on request from bookshops. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Denise. That was great. Denise: Okay, well, thank you. You gave me plenty to think about.The post Can Stories Save The World? Writing For The Environment With Denise Baden first appeared on The Creative Penn.

With so many technological advances in recent years, can publishing keep up? Michael Bhaskar and I discuss AI tools for writing, blockchain and NFTs, digital narration, and impacts on intellectual property rights licensing in this wide-ranging interview. In the intro, Spotify acquires Findaway and my thoughts on what it means for authors, narrators, and rights-holders [Spotify; Findaway; TechCrunch]; Storytel buys Audiobooks.com [Reuters]; Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent, or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Michael Bhaskar is a writer, researcher, and co-founder of publishing company, Canelo. His latest book is Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How much does publishing embrace technology?Why a long-term view is important for both indie and traditional publishing worldsImplications of Natural Language Generation tools like GPT-3The need for both creative play in terms of attitude to AI creation but also ethical guidelines around statements of use. [See the Alliance of Independent Ethical Guidelines.]Thoughts on AI narration for audiobooksBlockchain and NFTsIntellectual property rights and new technological possibilities You can find Michael Bhaskar at MichaelBhaskar.com and on Twitter @michaelbhaskar. Want more futurist episodes? Check out my resources at www.TheCreativePenn.com/future Transcript of Interview with Michael Bhaskar Jo: Michael Bhaskar is a writer, researcher, and a co-founder of a publishing company Canelo. His latest book is Human Frontiers, the Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking. Welcome, Michael. Michael: Thank you very much for having me. Great to be here. Jo: I'm excited to talk to you. First off, I wanted to ask, how have you managed to combine your interests in technology and publishing. Tell us a bit more about you. Michael: Well, with some difficulty, it has to be said. I often feel like I'm slightly leading two lives and endlessly trying to find little bridges between them, not always successfully. It is a bit of a struggle. I've always loved books and reading and storytelling, but I have always also been really interested in technology and how people invent new things and then what technology does to change the world. And those have just always been things that I've been fascinated about. At various times, one or the other seems to nudge ahead. And I always thought there would be a bit of a divide and one would have to choose. I guess the thing that brought them together for me was when I'd had left university and I was doing a few jobs and then that was just before the digital publishing wave hit in kind of the middle of the last decade…or, well, two decades ago now, 2005-2006. That created a few openings to work on ebooks, to work on digital publishing, to work on interesting digital experiments. That was the first way really that I felt like these two things could work together. I've always tried to maintain writing about both, writing about publishing but also writing about technology, working on publishing but always trying to use technology in interesting ways. So, it is an odd struggle and often they feel like very different worlds. When I'm doing my writing, it feels very far away actually from being a practicing publisher. So, I try and find these bridges between the worlds. But it doesn't always quite cohere even for me, to be honest. Jo: As I was saying before we started recording, I'm so glad to talk to you because I feel this too. I feel like I lead these two lives between being the artist and then being the business person who loves technology. It's hard to find people to talk to you because a lot of the bookish people seem to have some kind of disdain for technology. And yet, what we basically do now, as publishers, is so bound up in technology. I feel like finally publishing might be embracing this stuff. What do you think? Michael: To some extent. When I first started to work in digital publishing, 16 plus years ago, it astounded me how hostile the entire publishing industry was to technology. I found this a very unusual attitude because actually the publishing industry, and one of the first things I noticed about it is obsessed with newness and new things. It's always, ‘What are the new books? What are next year's books, next year's writer, next year's hot ideas?' And, so, on the one hand, I just thought, ‘Wow, there can't be many industries that are just as constantly open to a sea of new products and new people as publishing.' But at the same time, it had this incredibly conservative hostile attitude to any kind of meaningful change in the technological base that it worked on. That really did surprise me. What is amazing is that I don't think that has really changed. What's actually happened is that somebody like Amazon or Apple have solved the technological problems for publishers so they don't have to think about it particularly hard. Publishers are also quite hostile there. Again, just going back to when I first came into publishing, people thought Amazon was another book-selling account. They thought, ‘Oh, well, Amazon will never be as important as Waterstones or the supermarkets. I remember I always used to tell people in publishing, they complained about Amazon, and I would say, ‘Well, why don't you invest the company's money in Amazon stock?' Obviously, they didn't do that. Neither did I because I didn't really have any money. But had they done that, they would've been absolutely cleaned up on it. But, of course, they didn't because they didn't have a vision of what technology would do or how it could evolve and change and what the technology companies might become. It was just so far away from their thinking that that never occurred to them that Amazon might become this extraordinary behemoth that it has become. Jo: Funny you say that because I made a decision, a good few years ago now, not to go exclusive with Amazon and not sign with KDP Select for most of my books, which so many indie authors do. But, at the same time, I bought shares in Amazon because I was like, ‘I believe in their business model. I just ethically choose not to do that.' But, obviously, that was pre-pandemic. So funny that you recommended that too. It's interesting, the choices we make. You used the word ‘hostile' a minute ago. And the other thing that I think has changed since you got into this is that — There was this antagonism, this hostility between the traditional publishing industry and independent authors. I don't know if you remember when we were being called ‘the tsunami of crap' back in 2010, I guess when Kindle was really taking off. Michael: I think, unfortunately, a former employer, who I do actually have a huge amount of respect for, I think was one of the people who said those exact words. And I think, in that case, he got it catastrophically wrong, and I just couldn't disagree with him more about that, to be honest. Jo: How do indies and traditional publishers and hybrid publishers fit together in this new world? Michael: I think the ecosystem is vast, and it has space for so many different players. I guess here I can talk about my experience at Canelo. We love working with indie authors, that is great, we have a lot of authors who publish a lot with us but also publish on their own. I think that works absolutely fine. I think it means you're both working on that author's stuff. I think the author benefits from a publisher marketing but also from the editorial relationship. You can often really see that a writer is improving from that repeated working with professional editors. But then also that can go back into their own work. So, we love it. We just think it's a great model. There is room for everyone. I also think that traditional publishers, they are somewhat focused on the big genre or book that's very fashionable. And indie authors can follow their noses a bit and go into things that the big publishers have forgotten about or overlooked. So, I think that's hugely valuable. At Canelo, we love it when we realize that something we really enjoy is just being completely ignored by the big houses. And often, that's something that we can then work on within the authors who are in the space. So, for me, it's all just one ecosystem and there is space for everyone. The big publishers, they do things no one else can, they can back things and make things happen. But for me, there shouldn't be any antagonism. I think any publisher that is looking down their nose at anyone writing is just being an idiot. And I think the whole debate is really over. It's just an established fact that there is room for everyone, that there is great work coming from every corner. And that's just the reality and everyone needs to get on with that and acknowledge it. Jo: I'm so glad you feel that way because I always thought it was a bit of a waste of time to have any kind of antagonism in a world of books. Because we should be defending our books area against gaming and TV and all these other things that take people's attention rather than against other people of the book, one might say. I feel that there's still a lot of misinformation and harking back to the, in quotation marks, ‘good old days' and that perhaps people don't realize that all authors don't get seven-figure deals and that kind of thing. I still think the expectations are stuck in the 90s, for some reason. I hope that, slowly, we're all changing that expectation. Michael: I hope so. One thing I would say that I've definitely seen just become ever more extreme in the traditional publishing world, and it's not something that at Canelo we get involved with, we have a different model, but it's just that the polarization between the big bets of a publishing house and then everyone else is massive. Some people are getting paid astronomical amounts of money, but they are small in number and most people aren't. Most books aren't really working that well. So, the traditional publishing world is not this gold mine or this great place, it's actually just this very divided place between people who have got lucky or are already famous, in many cases, and everyone else. And again, that's just the reality of it that I think everyone thinking about the book world needs to know. It is this incredibly unequal place. Jo: Absolutely. And, look, to be honest, I think it's the same in the indie space. There are authors making seven figures, multi seven figures, as independent authors. But that's not the majority. The majority of people might make a few hundred, a few thousand that someone like me, who's got 30 plus books, is making good money. But I think it's the same, people see the outliers, the ones in the news, the J. K. Rowling or whatever. You're obviously a publisher too. We make money from years of creative work. And I think that's what I encourage authors to think is we love writing, we love books. This is a career, I've been doing this since 2006 I started writing, so, 15 years in, I make a good living. And I'm happy. Of course I'd love to break out, wouldn't we all, but I think long term creative work is the reality for all of us in publishing. Michael: I think you really capture there is how much of a long game it is and something I say this to authors all the time, ‘How much of a linear relationship there is between your output and your income?' If you're going to write 1 book every 2 or 3 years and expect that to really deliver a meaningful income, you will really struggle. Whereas people who are just nose to the grindstone producing two or three books a year, year in year out, over a decade, then that can really really start to add up. And I think, possibly, a lot of people just underestimate that, just how much of it is about hanging in there, being very consistent, working very hard, and then it starts paying off. There is this idea, and again, this is perhaps more the model of a traditional publisher and it's this hit-driven idea that you're going to sit there, work on a masterpiece, and it's just going to become some major bestseller. It's kind of like scoring a mega goal out of nowhere and that's it. But actually what it's more about is a long slog, it is more like a series of marathons than just scoring one mega goal. I think that that's an important message that publishers forget and writers forget, but that's just the nature of the beast. Jo: Well, ‘thinking long term,' everyone on my show hears that a lot. Let's get into the book because we've talked really about the past and the present but let's move into the future. The second half of your book, Human Frontiers, goes into how big ideas might emerge tomorrow. You mention GPT-3, which I've done a number of shows on, so, we don't need to get into technological detail. But you say, quoting from your book, you called it a ‘powerful real-world application already throwing up startling ideas.' I've been playing with Sudowrite, which is one of the tools that's been built on top of GPT-3. There's a lot of them now, essentially natural-language generation tools. I have included a statement of AI usage in the back of my next novel, which is coming out soon, Tomb of Relics. I wanted to ask about your opinion, as a publisher, for writers who are already using tools like GPT-3 and might not be admitting it as well. What are your thoughts on Natural Language Generation tools like GPT-3? Michael: Lots really, and I'm so glad, Joanna, that somebody in the writing world is thinking and talking about GPT-3 and in general, large language models and natural-language programming because, as far as I can see, I think your podcast is probably the absolute center of it. No one else is talking about this. It's been something that I've been thinking about for quite a while because I did a kind of consultancy gig for two years as a writer in residence at DeepMind, which is a subsidiary of Alphabet, and for those who don't know, is probably the world's leading AI lab. Perhaps along with OpenAI who produced GPT-3. For two years, I really had amazing insight into what was going on in AI, what was coming, why it's so important, how far advanced it could be, and just thinking through all of the issues around it, and in particular the social and ethical issues. To come on to what GPT-3…I think it's astounding that it's not being really thought of because it is a true existential-level event for publishers. But publishers, as I mentioned, they've not tried playing with GPT-3 and other large language models, so, they have no real conception of how powerful they are. They have no real idea of the level of textual interest that they can generate. And, of course, the thing about GPT-3 is that's not the last word. You've got to imagine what's it going to be like in 10 years when it's GPT-15 or they're talking about models with trillions of trillions of parameters. I think it's this extraordinary existential event that nobody is really thinking about. And it really is the case that these businesses that are worth billions of pounds probably should start doing that. So, that's one thing. As for your point about, a statement of usage, I think that is an absolutely brilliant and must-do suggestion. I think then there almost needs to be some industry-wide pact and policy on this that basically agrees to state what is AI-generated and what isn't. [The Alliance of Independent Authors has now included this in their Ethical Author Statement.] Of course, this is a massive societal problem because the potential for misinformation, and not just in natural language but in image generation and video generation, which is now fast coming up there, is so huge. We need to develop all of these mechanisms and norms about what's true. It'd be really interesting to see if the book world could lead on this because actually it's quite a contained use of AI. It's not like just putting out stuff on social media, an author and a publisher, one or the other or both, effectively do control what goes in the text. So, it'd be a very good litmus case for establishing a benchmark, ‘Right, this is generated by AI. This is generated by AI.' If we could do that well, it might become something that is more widely adopted by news organizations, say, or governments. It's a really exciting idea, it's something I'd love to be pushing and to get more involved with to like help create this standard. The difficulty is just going to be a matter of time. And am I or is anyone up for spending three years explaining just loads of stuff to publishers who don't really want to know? Jo: I agree with you on that. I've been involved with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and Orna Ross and I put together a submission for the British government IPO on AI and copyright. And, basically, my feeling a year later is the genie is out the box already or the horse has bolted or whatever you want to say. And, as you mentioned, if it's going to take three years to explain this like it did for ebooks, for example, then it's already too late. I already know people who are generating work and publishing it, traditionally published authors, as well as independent authors, who are not stating AI usage. There's no legal requirement. You can use a plagiarism checker and it's not plagiarized actually, that's also kind of scary. Michael: Yeah, it's completely newly generated. Jo: Exactly. So, I feel like what I'm trying to push for and what the Alliance of Independent Authors is pushing for is an ethical use of AI. And, also I'm not ashamed of using AI tools. I've stated in the back of Tomb of Relics, I use Google, I use Amazon, I use Amazon Auto Ads, I use ProWritingAid, and I use Sudowrite. So, all of these things are AI tools, it's not just the generation. Plus, I use it more as an extended thesaurus, at this point, but I'm very keen to push what is possible. Have you actually tried it? Michael: I have, yes, I have and I tried an early version of GPT-2 as well, which already had astounded me. And that wasn't made publicly-available at first because OpenAI made a big thing about how worried they were about it. So I have tried GPT-3 and I was stunned by what it could do. And then I haven't used it in the past couple of months because I just didn't have access to anything, but I'll follow up on some of the things, so, I'm amazed by it. I'm like you; I would say it's inevitable that people are going to use it, and that's why I think your approach is incredibly sensible. It's not about not using tools, it's just about for grounding when you have and are using them. I think that's such an important distinction. And look, Jo, I think we should start some kind of campaign about this because it's genuinely important. I can honestly say, it's just not on the radar of a lot of the big companies at all. It really needs to be. The fact that their authors might already be using it, that should set alarm bells ringing. Jo: You mention alarm bells, what I don't want is the sort of fear that we have. To me, what has changed in my own reaction to all of this is I have gone from fear of AI taking my job to, ‘Oh, this is absolutely wonderful. I love this.' I'm giggling away when I'm using Sudowrite. A year ago, I wanted to train a language model with my own output, with my own J. F. Penn books, and then write more in my voice. And I've completely changed my mind now, I don't want to write with myself, I want to write with ‘a mind' that is not like me. The stuff that comes out now between me and the AI…and, of course, the difficulty is the prompt engineering, that's the thing. And it's almost this childish wonder. I'm sitting there giggling, and that is not normal behavior for me during my writing time. Michael: In many ways, this is one of the arguments that I'm making in Human Frontiers. The book is saying that, in many ways, we're having problems coming up with major new ideas. And there's a lot of evidence across the board in society that we are, despite what a lot of people think, actually really bad at big revolutionary ideas. I am so excited by the potential of AI to reignite a new generation of ideas. And this is definitely the track record of AI is exactly as you say. One thing that DeepMind did very famously was it was the first to create an AI program that beat a human being at the game of Go, which is exponentially more complex than chess. Nobody thought that AI would be able to do it. [Alpha Go] But what was really really interesting about what happened to the game Go after DeepMind's work is it's totally changed. All the best players now are playing Go in an incredibly different much more freewheeling and much more creative way than they used to. It's almost like playing with and against the AIs has just opened up this whole new style that is incredibly exciting, that, in thousands of years, people had never really thought to play like this. But now they do. For me, that's the promise of AI is that, across the board, it's a new way of seeing. It's like a new tool that we can use for creative ends. I think it is really really exciting. And the way you're talking about it is exactly how I'd hope it would be used. Jo: Oh, good. I think playing with is what I'm trying to emphasize as well, this excitement at creativity. In the first half of your book you talk about stagnation. And it's actually quite funny because, probably about 18 months ago, I was really thinking about getting out of the publishing space because I was just like, ‘I am so frustrated with how stagnated this whole thing is.' And then all these things started to happen, and I was like, ‘Wow, okay. Things are now changing again. I feel like it's sort of 2008 all over again in terms of what's happening.' Let's come to another thing that I'm excited about, which is the AI narration of audiobooks and speech synthesis and all of these things. This is an opportunity to expand audio content into more languages, more dialects, allow listeners more choice. I actually, just this afternoon, been proofing my first audiobooks with DeepZen, and I'm blown away. Google Play Books is just bringing their AI narration out of beta. Because, again, the fear level in the publishing industry and protectionism seems to be very high. What are your thoughts on AI narration? Michael: I think it's just inevitably coming. It's one of those things where voice synthesis is is getting really really good. Again, it was something that DeepMind has worked on in relation to Android. There's a lot that's published about that. I just can't see how it can be stopped. Do I think that will mean that there'll be no more human-narrated audiobooks? No, because people really like certain narrators. I think there probably is something that's random about it that is good. Of course, there are celebrity narrators. Do I think AI-enabled narration is coming? Of course, because it does just open the barriers. It's futile to worry about it or to resist it, in my view, because it's going to happen because it's just so useful and the bottleneck on paying for narration is massive. So, as far as I'm concerned, it's just quite a simple thing. It is going to happen. There will be a lot of resistance and that resistance will just take the form of people not letting it happen to their books. But eventually, just that will change. In 10 years time, it'll just seem completely unremarkable. Jo: I agree. I feel like there needs to be a stratification of rights for audio. At the moment, a lot of publishers seem to just take audiobook rights, which, to me, is too broad. What I'm doing is I'm actually creating some of my audiobooks that I've narrated myself, as a human, and then getting them done in a male voice by the AI. So, it's the same work but one is AI, one is human. [From Joanna: Here are examples of the two: A Thousand Fiendish Angels — narrated by J.F. Penn A Thousand Fiendish Angels — digitally narrated by the voice of William Birch, produced by DeepZen] This is what I want. I don't know if you get this, I listen to loads of audiobooks, loads of business books out of America, and they are all narrated by American men. Whereas I would like to listen to them in the voice of a British female, for example, or maybe someone would like to listen in…I don't know, a Birmingham accent or whatever. So, this is what I feel we're missing. If there was a stratification of audio rights, what you'd have is a human-narrated single-voice audio, human-narrated multicast, for example, and then AI multi-voice rights or whatever. That's how I would like to see that happen. Michael: I think that would be fascinating. I think you're going to be pushing against a harder obstacle there. Because one thing I have learned is that it's eventually these kind of changes come through but changing the structure of rights, that is way harder than anything because then you're getting to the bedrock of the industry. That will just be more challenging. What I think will happen is just that slowly the increased functionality will seem better and better and people will just enable it. But I think it'll be difficult to start splitting out the rights. We'll see. If literary agents, for example, think that this might be beneficial to them and their clients, then you might see it start to happen. But I would imagine any publisher will just furiously resist this. It's not a great situation for publishers because, once again, they don't own the technology, so, they're not likely to be massive net winners from it. Publishers basically think, ‘Once again, we don't own the technology,' or, ‘but we're not technology companies. As long as we can cream a bit of extra money out of it, well, maybe we'll go along with it.' Eventually, they might get to that point. But I think the last thing to change will be the rights. Everything else will change first and then, eventually, there might be changes. Jo: That's interesting, isn't it, because all the AI stuff I've been delving into the last 18 months and the AI copyright stuff is that legislation happens years after people are already doing these things. So, the rights stuff will come, again, years after that probably. But that's what's weird as well because there's a lot of things that's going on, like the use of GPT-3 and these natural language-generation tools. There's nothing in a publisher contract necessarily that stops that happening. And listening to AI and copyright webinars, it's not plagiarism, it's not infringing copyright. So, there's nothing wrong with it. And yet, you hear pushback, for whatever reasons, based on fear and uncertainty and all that. So, it's interesting that you say, ‘the rights will be the last to happen.' I completely agree with you. The other thing that's really happened in 2021 is the explosion of NFTs. And, of course, it was about 3 years ago, 4 years ago when we first talked about blockchain at London Book Fair. And there are a few incumbents in the blockchain for books space but it's not been accepted in any way. Then, this year, NFTs have gone nuts. And, in the last few weeks, really, we've had Book Volts and Creatokia from Bookwire, who are a German company. What do you think is going to happen with blockchain and NFTs? Do you think publishers are just way way way too far away from this or have you heard of interest in this area? Michael: Being honest, I have not heard any interest around NFTs at all in the publishing space. I would say publishers are definitely behind the curve on it. I'm basically agnostic on whether NFTs will ever be a thing for book publishers. In some ways, I hope they don't because the beautiful thing about digital technology is its ability to spread. And I think NFTs might just be putting…I mean they're not stopping spread, so, I guess that doesn't…I'm just agnostic on the whole question of NFTs. I slightly think that, in 20 years' time, NFTs are going to be huge, but nobody's really going to be bothering to buy art or trainers as NFTs. What they're going to be is it's going to be a record of guarantee. So, you will assert that you've used AI here, here, and here in one of your books, and that will be somehow guaranteed by some kind of NFT or some kind of blockchain mechanism. I think there are potentially really interesting uses of it but I'm agnostic on the more kind of, I would say, obviously commercial uses. Jo: That's very interesting. Michael: That's where I am. Jo: Right, because I think this to me is very exciting because, if NFTs are essentially digital assets, that allow a smart contract to bring on resale of the NFT, the original creator can have an additional royalty, say, another 10%. And that carries on for the life of copyright. We have never had digital resale before. And this presents an entirely new business model. There are so many potential business models around NFTs, like, if people can get over the fact that they're not just a JPEG or whatever. To me, that resale of digital special editions could be absolutely huge. Because we haven't had that before. Right? Michael: We haven't had that and there's just no market because it doesn't exist. I would love to see some experimentation there. I think the difficult thing would be working out a pricing structure that actually works. But, you know, the only way that we'll be able to figure out a possibility would be to try it. I mean, is it going to work? I don't know but my kind of default would be to say, ‘It's got to be worth trying.' I think already that is a more interesting business model than just selling an NFT of cover artwork, say. The big question is about what elements of a special edition are going to be sufficiently value-add that then it is something that is very much worth paying for, both initially and then down the line. But that's the kind of creative task that I think we should be doing. I used to do a lot more of that kind of creative thinking. At Canelo, we are just pretty much focused on publishing books, and that's basically because we're a startup, we need to publish books to survive. But I think we do have a hankering to get back to some of what we were doing 5, 10, 15 years ago, which was just thinking in a very open way, ‘Well, what could all of this be? How can we reinvent the world of books for a digital age?‘ So, perhaps this would be the experiment. I guess one thing I have learned though, Joanna, is is that readers are skeptical of things that introduce more complexity. And, so, the key on this is to somehow make it so seamless that it has not complexified either the product or the process of buying it. Because if it does either of those things, I think then it starts to really really struggle. So, those for me are the things to think about, how is it as simple as buying or reading a book? Jo: Well, it clearly isn't right now. Again, like I said, I think it's 2008 in the world of ebooks, if you remember, I was living in Australia… Michael: I think it's more like 1998 in the world of ebooks… Jo: Well, maybe it is. Michael: I think it's not that early and that undeveloped. Jo: Right. I would say it's a little bit further in that people actually can transact online. But I agree it's really early. I think what's interesting is this is a fan-based model in the same way that physical special editions are a fan-based model. Most readers do not buy special editions. So, the example I give is the Brandon Sanderson 6.7-million-dollars special edition of The Way of Kings, which he sold to traditional publishing years ago and then did a Kickstarter for. I think that's what NFTs represent, it's a fan-based product. I'm planning on doing one for Tomb of Relics because it's the first book I've ever used AI with. So, what I did while I was writing it is I recorded a video of me writing with AI. So, this is the first book I've done with it. It's got a video of me writing with it and it's going to have an image of my handwritten edits. So, it's actually a pretty original product and I'm still looking at what platform to put it on. Michael: That was going to be my question is where will it go? There are now a lot of these NFT marketplaces and services that are doing it. Jo: As we're recording this at the end of October, 2021…and, as I said, in the next couple of weeks I'm talking to Creatokia from Bookwire and, obviously, there's Bookchain, Publica, Book Vaults, but also there's just places like OpenSea and you can use different blockchains. I think the point is, as you said, this is such early days but I was one of the first people in Australia to get a Kindle, I was one of the first international authors to publish on the Kindle, one of the first to do ACX audio. I feel like I kinda have to do this to prove some kind of point. Michael: I'm fascinated by the psychology of NFT purchases. So, there's a website based in London, it's been backed by some of the biggest VCs in the world and it sells NFTs of graphic trainers. So, you own an NFT of these trainers but it's selling NFTs very often for tens of thousands, and fairly often for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm just really curious about the kind of economics and psychology of it. Are people investing as a kind of speculative place or are they buying things as a collector would buy things? And that's what I'm interested in. Because I don't know and I don't understand it. Jo: There's a lot to know but I think it's interesting. You have another book called Curation: the Power of Selection in a World of Excess, and I feel like a lot of this comes down to there's a world of digital access. These are digital special original assets. Now, of course, the world of publishing is not the world of multi-million dollar trainers, so, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is special-edition ebooks that have resale potential. Anyway, I think the point is there's a whole lot to explore here. And again, as we record this toward the end of 2021, what we're probably saying is it's going to take at least five years, but what you're saying is 10 years, for it to become mainstream. Michael: I guess my question though is do people who will buy your NFT, do you have any sense or do you mind whether they're buying it as a speculative asset or they're buying it as a kind of fan buy-in thing? Jo: Of course I don't mind, I don't mind at all. I have a goal this year, which is to earn Ether. Because I think earning cryptocurrency is going to be an important thing. And I think, we can't get into digital currencies here, but the financial system is changing, they're going to be digital central bank currencies, all of those. At the moment, I'm just playing with things. And look, to be honest, I have enough techie people in my audience who may well take a punt on me actually achieving something in this digital space over the next decade. So, I don't mind either way. And also, look, if it falls flat on its face, I don't mind. It's an experiment. Michael: Yeah, that's fine. I think you have to take that attitude. I just commend your adventurous spirit and I do think it says something about the business and creative landscape that you're the author who's doing this, that no publisher is even considering it, would barely know what Ethereum is and have a clue at what it could mean in its most developed forms for the world and the future of finance, etc. So, that's fascinating. I will follow very closely because I think it's seriously interesting. Jo: I'll let you know. I also want to ask your opinion on the rights issue. And, in fact, I actually put out an article today about intellectual property rights and I found an article, back in 2008, which is when the publishers were sending round addendums to contracts basically asking for digital rights or author rights… Michael: I was doing a lot of that at the time. It was probably me. Jo: Do you remember; was the phrase ‘digital rights'? Is that what people signed an addendum for? Michael: I think that's almost certainly what we would've asked for. If you were a switched on literary agent or author, you would've come back and said, ‘No, electronic ebook rights, here's what I mean by an ebook.' I'm sure that publishers in the first place would've tried for the broadest possible definition. In many cases, that would've got through, and in many cases it will have been whittled back to something much more specific. Jo: Because this is what I'm now concerned about. This struck me on another 3 a.m. moment the other day, which is, if NFTs and blockchain is a reinvention of the way we do digital, which it could well be, and NFTs, essentially, you could argue are an ebook…well, they're certainly a digital product…and resale of these digital products becomes a thing, there's nothing in contracts about resale percentage to authors. I think that, again, we're going to have to go through another round of addendums within the next few years. Michael: I think there would be something about on the resale because digital rights and ebook rights tends to be on a net-receipts basis. So, if a publisher is earning money from resales, the author will still earn a percentage of that that's come to the publisher. They should be covered to some extent but what the split should be would be then a very different question. It might be argued that it needs re-examining. Jo: Or I guess more to your point, it's a bit like all the authors who've signed away audiobook rights whose books are not available in audio. I feel like the same will happen with NFTs in that most authors won't be able to do them because they don't have digital special-edition rights. In the same way that Brandon Sanderson actually excluded special editions from his traditional publishing deal, which meant he could do his own Kickstarter. Rights have to be more clearly defined in the digital space. So, it was just something I was thinking about was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is interesting.' Michael: Yeah. And any author or literary agent with…say, if you're passing over audiobook rights, you should…and, I'm saying this as a publisher and we do like to get all the rights we can but, you know, at Canelo, we like to be fair, and that's very important that we're very fair and transparent. I think pretty much we would always have some clause, or authors and agents would insist on having a clause that says, ‘If you don't produce an audiobook in X time, the author can revert that right.' That should be something that people listening should always be getting if they are looking at contracts. If a publisher isn't going to exercise the right, then it shouldn't necessarily be able to have that in perpetuity. So, there could be some major battles on the horizon about this because, yes, is an NFT an ebook or a digital product? What should be the definition of it? Where should it sit? What should the splits be? There is just absolutely no precedent here. So, what it took was, with ebooks, there was this thing where it became 25 net receipts. At Canelo, we have doubled that and upwards as our basic digital royalty. But if you go to a traditional publisher, that's your royalty. I think it was Random House, it wasn't PRH at that time, just came out and said, ‘We're going to do 25% across the board.' And they said that publicly. And then every other publisher just went, ‘Yep, we'll do that.' And then bam, it was there. I wonder if we'll see something like that. I suspect not because I think this is going to be happening on a much more bespoke basis. I think it's very different market. It is going to be smaller in terms of the number of actors but, potentially, more lucrative in terms of the margin that you're making. It'll be fascinating to watch it happen. My guess is the standard will be set because probably Penguin Random House will eventually have to come out with a policy on it that will be public, and then all the other publishers will follow. But it will be a massive fight. Jo: It's funny you mentioned ‘consulting,' I used to be an IT consultant and I even set up a website and everything for doing consulting around AI, Web3, blockchain, and this kind of features stuff. And then I just pulled it down again and went, ‘Oh goodness…' It's like you said, ‘Do I want to spend years trying to drag people kicking and screaming into the future? Wouldn't I rather just get on and do it.' At the moment, I feel like I just want to get on and do it. But that's why it's so good to talk to you because you mentioned the word ‘bridge,' like I feel like we need more bridges between where we are now and the future. In the same way that we needed to bridge that digital gap a decade ago. To me, the next decade is going to be another reinvention, possibly even bigger than the one we just did. Michael: I think that's true both in terms of wider society and technology and probably in terms of books. But I actually think the main difference is that, a decade ago, publishers were employing people like me to think about this and now they have just completely rowed back and they just think, ‘Right, well, we weathered that storm and we survived pretty much intact. We now do these things called ebooks, we do audio book downloads, but that's it. We never need to worry again, we're just going to stick with the groove.' So, in some ways, I think the book-publishing world is in a much more closed-minded space than it was even 10 years ago when they had started to really engage with it. And they'd started to engage with it because they'd seen what happened to music and they'd seen the revenues just fall off a cliff, and they were terrified by that. This time around, with blockchain, with AI, they are just so out of the game that I kind of even struggle to think how they're going to do it. The other thing that I think that they've really miscalculated on is that, if you want to get people to put you in an advanced position in blockchain or AI, it's extremely expensive and difficult. And there's already a war for those people amongst the tech companies where there's just simply no way that publishers can get back in the game, and, so, they're just never going to be able to catch up on this front, they're always going to be well behind the technological curve, they're not going to be setting the agenda for anything that's happening. And, so, they're going to be at a kind of perpetual disadvantage. I think that's probably quite an exciting thing for authors who are in your position where you can be more nimble, you can set the pace, you can actually do a lot more that is a lot more innovative, a lot better. So, that might be the ultimate shift that happens is it's just the people who are really pushing the boundaries can get ahead of where any publisher is at and, thus, potentially clean up. Jo: Excellent. That sounds like fun. Michael: It's going to be hard, it's going to be hard. For those reasons that I said, unless you can make it all simple, it's difficult. But the AI stuff is about writing and need not impact the consumer. It's as much a creative revolution as anything else. Jo: Indeed. Well, there are so many exciting things going on right now. That's why I enjoyed your book, I thought that the future of big ideas is how I feel at the moment. I am just so excited about the next decade. And it feels like you are too in a slightly less exuberant way than me. Michael: I am excited. I am massively excited. I do think there are a lot of challenges. I think there are a lot of fears around this that can't be dismissed. I think some people just have a natural fear of something like GPT-3, or even projecting forward GPT-15, it really worries them at a deep level. I do get that and I think it's important that people who are on the frontiers of this do acknowledge this is a profound change in what is possible. And that is unsettling and it does come with risks and it does come with the risk of losing something as well. I always think everyone involved has a responsibility to make it work, and that's not necessarily going to be straightforward. I'm excited that there are such creative people as you, and I'm sure lots of your listeners. And I'm disappointed that traditional publishers aren't here as well. Jo: Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Michael: Well, look me up on Twitter, @michaelbhaskar, I'm on Twitter all the time. And you can find my books on Amazon or in all good bookshops. Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Michael, that was great. Michael: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.The post Big Ideas In Technology And Publishing With Michael Bhaskar first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Dave Chesson provides many useful tools and information for authors at Kindlepreneur and he has recently launched Atticus, writing and formatting software that will output both ebook and print formats, as well as providing collaboration and ARC management tools. Dave Chesson is the founder of Kindlepreneur and producer of Publisher Rocket and Atticus, amongst many other useful resources for authors. He's also an author and a military veteran who used to be a nuclear engineer. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How self-publishing has changed in the last decade and why the ‘stigma' no longer existsTips for reviving a back-listIs A+ content woth implementing?Types of keywords for non-fiction books, and also for fiction. You can do more of your own research at PublisherRocket.Strategies for keywords across different book formatsKey benefits and features of Atticus including design and output of various ebook and print formats, as well as collaboration and ARC management You can find Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur.com and on Twitter @DaveChesson. Transcript of interview with Dave Chesson Joanna: Dave Chesson is the founder of Kindlepreneur and producer of Publisher Rocket and Atticus amongst many other useful resources for authors. He's also an author and a military veteran who used to be a nuclear engineer. Welcome back to the show, Dave. Dave: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. More than a couple of years ago, 2018, you were on this show. We talked about your backstory so we're not going to go into that today. Before we get into some details, let's have a bit of a wide overview of the industry because you and I have been doing this for probably over a decade. What are some of the significant changes that you've seen? Because you've paid a lot of attention obviously to the whole industry, but Amazon in particular. What's changed in self-publishing and why is it still interesting? Dave: There's two big things to it. We'll start with Amazon and then we're going to talk about the industry. You remember back when the reporting from Amazon was just heinous? There was not even a chart. You had to look at instantaneous data. The fact that Amazon really stank at just telling me how much money I was making was just indicative of their lack of attention. And they were very slow to roll out or do anything whatsoever. I would say if we're taking a really 20,000-foot view here, I think that over the past couple of years Amazon has been ramping up a lot and changing and adding and doing a lot of things. This to me gives me a lot of hope in the future because if Amazon is really focused on this, hopefully, great things are going to come of it. The fact that they've introduced A+ content, whether I like it or not, Kindle Vella, whether I like it or not, at least they're doing something there. They're always adding to the Amazon Ad system. Clearly, they like that. And they did an overhaul on their analytics and their reporting. Plus, they're constantly doing things with their categories, and one of the things as the creator of Publisher Rocket, much to my chagrin, they're constantly testing things all over the site. One day you'll wake up and maybe a group of people in America or in one particular state might see that there's this new button, or a color, or they've gotten rid of the also by and they've moved it down, and then they're constantly seeing what is helping them to sell more. I like the fact that they're giving that attention. I love Barnes & Noble, don't get me wrong. And the people who run B&N Press are phenomenally super-smart, great people. I mean, really cool. And they've got amazing ideas. But I get the feeling that Barnes & Noble looks at B&N Press and does not give them the attention, does not give them the authority to make a lot of changes or the changes that they really want to do. So, from an organization side, at least Amazon is doing things that are affecting indie authors, whether they're awesome yet, at least we're seeing something. So that is one thing I'm very hopeful about for the future. The second thing though is to turn to the industry. Back when we started as indie authors, the publishing companies, the publishing agencies, the publishing side looked down at us. I'm just generalizing here. Joanna: The stigma of self-publishing. Dave: Exactly. Like, ‘Ah, couldn't hack it in our industry. They're just letting really bad books onto the market and just crowding.' But here's the thing though. And again, I'm just generalizing. They're starting to look at indie authors and saying, ‘Huh. You know what? Here's an author that clearly wrote a good enough book because there's a lot of reviews. Clearly, they know some marketing. Clearly, they have an email list and they have a presence. Why take a chance on somebody who's never done any of that when we can sign this person over here who has a proven track record or seems to be trending in the right area?' I like to call it, they're looking at us like free agents, like in sports where, ‘Hey, this player's done this. Let's go ahead and sign them.' And so, we've gone from a stigma of being the ‘meh,' to being the ‘huh.' Joanna: It's the irony, of course, of being a successful independent author that before you were successful, you really, really wanted to be picked by the industry and you were like, ‘Please pick me.' And then by the time you become really super successful and they come to you, you're like, ‘Why would I do that?' Dave: Exactly. Joanna: Exactly. So obviously, a lot of people take different deals and we're encouraging people to license rights as they see fit, but it's definitely a change in attitude. And you're right, especially when I started out in 2008, they called it the “tsunami of crap.” And it's like, ‘Yeah, okay, fair enough.' But things have definitely changed. You've mentioned a couple of things there around A+ content and changes with ads. I've been doing book marketing stuff since 2008 and I almost feel like I take for granted the things that work when things might change and I might not be paying enough attention. So, tell us, particularly for authors who might not have touched their backlist for a while, so those of us with bigger chunks of backlist; What should we revisit in terms of our backlist marketing or what should we pay more attention to? Dave: There's a lot of different answers to that question, so I'm going to choose one and I'm going to stick to it so it can be really detailed. I like the idea that a lot of authors will write a really good book and they'll do their launch and they'll do their marketing and they see some sales and then all of a sudden at a certain time period, the sales drop off. This happens a majority of the time. And the book just never recovers. Now, the author has gone on to write more books, which is a very good strategy and I highly recommend that, and they've built up their backlist. But in time, I'd recommend to a lot of authors going back to that first book and looking at, ‘Hey, what did I do wrong?' Because let's face it, the first book you ever published probably wasn't amazing. Maybe it sold well but maybe you made a lot of mistakes. Over time you've learned, you've gained experience, you have intuition on what's right and what's wrong. You can go back to that old book and you can look and be like, ‘Oh, you know what? That cover kinda looks neat but it's a bit confusing when I shrink it down to the size that the customers see. Huh. My subtitle really doesn't describe who this is for or my book description reads like a book report.' And if you can go back and start to see the mistakes or so and revisit it and shock it a little bit and then use some of these new marketing tools like Amazon Ads…and I say new because maybe that book came out when they weren't there. Or you have an email list that you've never used because you didn't have it when you launched that book. When you start to incorporate those things, you can really drive it back up. Another thing that I really like too is you talked about it, your backlist. If you have an Also By page, updating that on the old books to the new books can also help to increase the sales across. So, while we move forward in our books, sometimes it's really good to go back to some of the books you had and use that new knowledge and experience to help bring them about and use some of the new tools that Amazon has provided and increase your overall revenue. Joanna: It's so funny, I know some people listening were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, heard it before.' And it's like, ‘Yes, you have heard it before and it's important.' Even emailing your list, the first in series, I actually did that quite recently, emailed my JF Penn list about Stone of Fire, which was my first novel, which I did re-edit. It's on its third or fourth cover by now. I did all those things. I emailed my list thinking, ‘Oh, they will have all read it already but I'll give it a go.' I got a whole lot of downloads because of course over the decade or so since I've run that email list, people come in on different books so they might not know that that first book in series is actually perma-free, for example, as an e-book. So even doing that kind of thing, even putting that into an email auto-responder to series so that you don't forget to do it. It's quite a good idea. I do want to ask you about newer stuff. The A+ content, right, if people don't know, can you just explain what that is and is it worth doing? Because I've had a go and I'm like, ‘Oh, I don't know if I can be bothered.' Is Amazon's A+ content it worth it? Dave: A+ content is a visual editorial review section. And for those who don't know, the editorial review section is the section where you can honestly put just about anything in there. At one point, Amazon in their FAQ actually said, ‘Even your mom can leave something in the editorial review.' I was shocked. And they finally changed it, of course, but…so I mean anything. I mean anything. If you have a friend, if you have a colleague or a person you work with, another author or you've got a blog to review, you can leave that there and there's a really good structure to it. But then Amazon said, ‘Visuals and images really speak a lot. So, let's give them an opportunity to create the section where they can put images.' Right now I would say that I don't have enough data. We're trying to collect data on whether or not it is beneficial so I can't speak on that. But what I can say though is whether or not it helps, I think it really depends. I know that sounds like a copout, but there's the thing. If I'm looking at your book…so I'm a shopper and I have searched and I see this really cool book cover and then I see your title and subtitle and I read your book description and I'm like, ‘Oh, okay.' And I'm still scrolling down on your Amazon sales page. The way I look it, at that point, you're still kind of iffy. A lot of people are just using the same cover. And I'm like, ‘Well, I already saw that so that's not going to change things.' But where it gets really bad though is some authors are just going in there and throwing something in and now it looks unprofessional. Maybe you paid some top dollar or something or you're a really good designer and you create a great book cover. But if you're not going to make that A+ content section look very professional, it may hurt. So, I say to authors, ‘I think it can't hurt if you have a great graphic designer or if you can do it yourself.' But to throw something together just because, that's not a good idea. Right now, that's the best advice I can give on it until we can report data and then be able to see. But also too, if Amazon keeps it around, it's probably helping them sell books. If it's not helping them sell books, they'll get rid of it so Amazon will also be a good test taster on that one. Joanna: That is a good point. They will just get rid of it if it doesn't help. Dave: Yes. I think what we're seeing so far is that the people who made the change and added it, they haven't seen such a giant sale that authors are just speaking volumes. Some of them are doing it. They're like, ‘Well, maybe,' is kind of what I'm hearing. Like, ‘I think it might've. I can't imagine it didn't or…' Joanna: But then we like to think that because we like the image. It's like, ‘Oh, it's a good image so it must be working.' Dave: Right. But we haven't seen it where somebody's done it and the sales have dropped dramatically. So, I think that's why there's a lot of hesitation about it because nothing's come. I think Amazon, on the other hand, knows. They can see the minute difference. It could be just a 0.1% increase in sales but to Amazon, that's millions of dollars. To us, it's like one book sale. They're seeing the data. And like I said, I think they'll be our telltale whether or not it's successful because they're not going to keep it if it's not helping them to make more money. And if it's making them lose money, begone with you. It's gone. Joanna: Definitely. Dave: So, we'll see. Joanna: Let's go to things that definitely do make a difference if you get them right, which is keywords and categories. One of your excellent tools is Publisher Rocket, which I use and recommend to everyone I can talk to. It's super useful. In fact, I'm writing in a niche, a travel niche around solo walking and I don't think I've really done this before. I normally write a book and come up with a title and then I go look for keywords to add to the keyword field. But this time, I'm not. I'm trying to be a bit better because it's nonfiction, which is easier. I'm like, ‘Okay, solo walking is a thing. Solo walking for women is a thing. How can I research this?' I am looking at categories and keywords. You had a really good blog post about this recently, particularly for nonfiction keywords. What are some of your main tips for keywords as it relates to nonfiction in particular? Dave: Absolutely. That's a great way to put it because keywords are completely different between fiction and nonfiction because keywords aren't some magical word that we authors come up with. Keywords are actually, by definition, the words that customers on Amazon type into Amazon when searching for a book. What we need to do as authors is try to figure out what kind of words come to mind when describing what it is they want. And if it is fiction, they're describing the kind of story they want. They're trying to define elements by talking about the time period, the setting, the tone of the genre, the level or the intensity, and any descriptor on characters or characterizations. These things comprise of the, shall we say, phrase they type into Amazon. But when it comes to nonfiction, on the other hand, really, it's being broken down into what I call four general areas, and that's pain points, desired results, emotional amplifiers, and demographics. Now, when a shopper comes to Amazon, maybe they use all four or maybe they use one or two, maybe three. The key is that they're sitting down and they're thinking, ‘All right. I'm here for a nonfiction book.' And so, what they type in depends on what really pops in their mind. For example, let's start with pain points. Pain points is when they think of the pain or the reason of why they want to learn whatever it is they're going for. Joanna: Weight loss. That's always a good one. Dave: Right. The pain would be overweight, can't fit into my dress. That's the pain. That's the initial statement. And so, they start coming up with why they're there. Desired results, on the other hand, is the opposite end of that spectrum, which is what it is they want to accomplish. So, losing weight would be the desired result or, beach body is the desired result. Again, those are two sides of the coin. You may say, ‘Well, it's kinda the same thing.' But they're not. And so, these are really good things for us authors to think about. Next is emotional amplifiers. Now, these are like words that add to the pain point or the desired result. So, this could be, ‘Lose weight fast,' okay, or it could also be something like, ‘Speedreading in one hour,' ‘Lose weight like crazy,' or, '13 ways to lose weight fast,' 13 being something that says like, ‘It's easy, just 13 steps.' When you add those things in, ‘Do I want to lose weight? Yes. I want to lose weight. If it takes two years, no, I want to lose it now. I want to fit in that dress now.' And so, if we add these kind of words together, notice that we're starting to build a better understanding of who it is. But this brings me to my last one, which is demographics, and I think this is the real secret sauce, especially for starting authors is that it's not just that I'm overweight. It's not just that I want to lose weight and feel great. It's not just that I want to do it fast. But I want to make sure that this book is for me. If I understand who it is I'm writing for, I think this is a really good one to look at, not only after you publish but before you start writing to understand that there's an opportunity. For example, it could be, ‘How to motivate my teenage kid.' Just that change. A great example of this was years ago when writing books on…oh, boy. What was that with the elephant? Evernote. There it is. Evernote, right? Joanna: Yeah, Evernote. Dave: There we go. Man, years ago that was, like, a really hot one. There were a lot of people searching on Amazon on books on Evernote and there was kind of a craze. There was a lot of people writing books on Evernote. Now, if you were thinking, ‘All right, I'm going to jump in on this opportunity', your option at that point is you could either A, try to write a book on Evernote that somehow beats out the 200 other books on Evernote. B, you are an amazing marketer who can beat out the other 200, or C, perhaps there is a demographic that exists that's searching for it. And sure enough, back then, there really were people typing in at Amazon, ‘Evernote for authors, Evernote for students, Evernote for project managers, and Evernote for lawyers.‘ Now there are more people typing into Amazon, ‘Evernote,' ‘Learn Evernote,' but if you are the only book on Amazon that's Evernote for authors or Evernote for students and I type in, ‘Evernote for students,' guess which one's going to get bought? I clearly know that this book was written for me. And so, your conversion rates are going to be extremely high. I think that when you as an author are sitting down to come up with your nonfiction keywords, I tell people, ‘Break out a sheet of paper and start by creating four columns for those things we talked about.' And it's pain points, desired results, emotional amplifiers, and demographics. Then start coming up with every way that you can think of to describe those things and what your book will be. This paper is super cool because, for those who own Publisher Rocket, you can then go and put that information in there. You can even expand because Rocket will then tell you, ‘Hey, you wrote this but here's a whole bunch of other things that are close to that that people are typing in Amazon.' You can see how many people are typing it into Amazon. You can see the competition, all that. But here's where it really becomes important. That sheet of paper is awesome for when it comes time to come up with your title, come up with your subtitle, and even better, for your book description because these are all really cool terms and words and phrases that describe your book but also people are typing into Amazon, especially if you're using Rocket. And as I say in sales copy, if you can use your own target market's words to describe what it is they're looking for, you're doing great. And so now as you start to list the benefits to reading this book, you can use these exact words they were describing when they were describing their desired results or you can hook them by using their pain points like, ‘Do you feel pain in your lower back? Does it feel like something's biting you every time you get up out of bed?' I'm like, ‘Oh, my gosh. That's exactly what I typed into Amazon. Oh, boy. This must be the book for me'. All of these things can really come together to help you to not only get the right people to see your book but to also make sure that they know that this really is the right book for them. Joanna: And I wanted to emphasize this because I've had a few conversations lately and people don't realize that these keywords are not just for the keyword field. They're also for potentially title and subtitle for nonfiction books. And of course, the examples we've given are, sort of, self-helpy but it's the same. I'm writing essentially a travel memoir/travel log and I'm thinking about the series name, I'm thinking about the title, the subtitle, and it's probably more about the emotional side and the demographic when it comes to a travel memoir. Dave: Yes. Joanna: It's not going to be 10 tips to walk alone. It's not that kind of book. It's to appeal to people who want to do solo walking. So, I'm going to put that in there somewhere. It's just a question of where. We're not talking about writing to market here, although you can use this research to write to market. But I'm more talking about actually thinking about it before I've done the title and the book cover and all of that. And it's still important. I feel like this is one of those fundamental marketing things that if you can do, it just takes the pressure off. And then you can do ads later, you can do whatever later. If you get these fundamentals right, it makes so much difference. Dave: Right. And like I said, at that point, the book that you're writing, this exercise helps you not only for choosing those keywords but also to help you to build a better book description, to choose the right way to express the subtitle. And I also think too that what's really excellent about it…and by the way, let me point this. I've always thought that memoirs are the combination between nonfiction and fiction. I think that from a marketing standpoint, I like to approach it that way. If you're doing the memoir, I highly recommend you use the fiction and nonfiction methods together. Joanna: And have a really long thing going on. Dave: Right. When people are looking at memoirs, they want to be entertained whereas a nonfiction book, just nonfiction is, ‘I just want to learn. Tell me how to walk or how to do this particular journey.' Joanna: Recap the fiction for us then since you've mentioned it again. What are those things that you mentioned for fiction and any tips for that? Dave: We talked about the important components to nonfiction, describing it with pain points, results, amplifiers, and demographics. Fiction, we're describing the entertaining component to it. What's the story? And so, I say the same thing with the sheet break out the sheet. Make the four columns. Some of this won't apply for your particular memoir but the first one would be time period and settings. Now, there are memoirs out there that, you know, it's the middle child in the 1950s, right. Joanna: I'm definitely going to have setting. Setting as in physical setting. Dave: Exactly. Backpacking through the Alps is different than through Europe. Making sure that we have that component in there is going to be key. The next column is character types and roles. This might not be something but you could find, for example, roles like who is the person that is going to set forth on this journey, right? Who are you? Looking at how you describe that is going to be important. Plot themes and special events for fiction. Usually this is what's the catalyst, what started the story or what sparked this to happen. Was it a plane crash, was it dragons from post-apocalyptic era or was it the sense of wanting to be free from society and be one with nature? What started that desire to start this journey? And finally, and this was one of my favorites, especially for fiction, is style and tone of genre. Now, this might be a little bit hard for a memoir, and again, that's the thing about the memoir, it's like the combination of two. But for most fiction, this is really going to come down to, when I ask an author, ‘What are you writing?' They're like, ‘Romance.' I'm like, ‘Okay. What kind of romance?' ‘Oh, well, it's a, you know…' Sometimes they fumble over it but here's the thing, though. There's a huge difference in romance from wholesome, clean, maybe even Christian romance or something like that on the left and then it goes all the way to steamy, hot, other phrases, erotica, and all these other things. Let me tell you, the person who's reading the Christian wholesome one wants to make sure they're not going to get the steamy, hot one and vice versa. And so, we need to make sure that we have words, whether it's in our description, in our subtitle, title, or in our selected keywords to help to make sure that when I type in, ‘Steamy, hot romance' clearly, I'm going to get the steamy, hot romance and I'm not going to get the clean, Christian one. There is a difference there. I think that's a very, very important part for authors is to make sure they really understand, is this a bloody thriller or is this a mystery thriller? And you could probably even go crazier on these terms. Is this intergalactic military sci-fi or is this a funny space opera? Again, all these words really describe the tone or style of the genre. I think it's really important for authors to take into consideration. Joanna: Readers know what they want and they use all of these different things to find what they want. And it's so funny because we always say, ‘It's really hard. Discoverability is really hard.' It's hard for us but it's not hard as a reader. It's hard as an author but it's not hard as a reader. I read a lot of books and I do not have trouble finding books. I have trouble finding time to read all the books I want to read. So, readers will find what they're looking for. For example, I really like ancient artifacts and relic thrillers and religious thrillers and that kinda thing. So, I'm down in that niche as a reader and as a writer. But I did want to ask you, so back on the keyword field itself and the category field. When we publish a book, we put in those things, obviously, we put description as well on each format. I've got my e-book, I've got my paperback, I've got my hardback. We can also have a large print. And then I've got an audiobook. So, I've got five formats almost per book now. When we use keywords, should we be trying to use different keywords on each format in order to maximize discoverability? I do use large print and have specific keywords around large print and occasionally there's things with hardback in. Should we be trying to broaden everything with different keywords per format, or should we try and double down on the same keywords per format? Dave: One of the things I like to do is I like to tell people when it's either my opinion or if I have data to back it up. And for the answer for this, I do not have data to back up my opinion. One of the cool things about running Publisher Rocket is we collect a lot of data and we're able to test things. We've even done an experiment two years ago where we created a special crawler to see how the keywords you chose and where you put them in your boxes…how does that affect your book's discoverability on Amazon? And by the way, it's a super expensive experiment. But I didn't think to test how it would be in the different versions of a book. So, if I did this in paperback but then I did this in an e-book…so I don't have data to support what I'm about to say but what I think is I think you're dead-on in saying that if it's a hardcover or it's large print that there are certain phrases you may want to put in there to make sure that that shows up. Amazon knows that if I really need large print, I'm probably going to put something like that in my search term and they need to know that this really is or it's intended to be. That being said, though, is that I haven't seen anything that would allude to the idea or the recommendation that an author should do a completely different set of keywords for every version of their book. I haven't seen anything that would make me say that that is something somebody should absolutely do. What I personally do is I generally keep my keywords the same but I may change one or two of the boxes. There's the 7 Kindle keyword boxes that you fill in and there's 50 characters in each box. One thing that we did prove in that experiment was that say you put five words in that box, Amazon will use all the different variations of those words. So, if you put in ‘red dragon, army battle,' then ‘dragon army, red army,' all of those phrases, you will be indexed for, so long as Amazon recognizes that as a searchable term. That being said, though, we also learned that if you put in a specific phrase, you'll rank better for that phrase than if you put five different words in there. For example, ‘dragon army.' You want to rank better for ‘dragon army?' Then just put ‘dragon army' in there. And we saw that books naturally had a better ranking for that keyword. So, my ultimate recommendation to people for that was use Publisher Rocket, find the four phrases that you absolutely want that does describe your book and gets searches on Amazon. You can get that in the software. And then just put those exact phrases into four of your seven boxes. Then for the last three, go in there and take a combination of all the other words you liked and put them in there. We believe that this will help you to rank better for the ones you really care about and help to spread you out in even more terms. And it gives Amazon sort of a better understanding of what your book is about. We've also found too that they figure out that, ‘Oh, this book does well for this word so let's put them in this phrase because in the past, this has done well too, they're connected.' And so, they spread you out. We believe that that is the best strategy for the seven boxes. With that in mind, what I do is I generally keep five, six of the boxes the same for each one of the versions and I may change one or two of the boxes between the different formats and go from there. The reason why I don't believe that that strategy is major is because I also have seen from our data that Amazon will generally choose to show the version of your book they think will sell the best for the search phrase. If say, for example, they have the historical data that people will find your book but they constantly choose the audiobook or they constantly choose the e-book version, then Amazon notices, ‘Hey, if this book is to show up for this search term, let's show the one that converts the best automatically.' And so, they choose that. When we authors choose our categories, that really helps Amazon to understand what all the other words mean. For example, imagine the person in a bookstore who gets a book on Wiccan. Maybe they think that must be religion or they may be like, ‘Oh, that's one of those fantasy ones, right?' Those are two different books. If they don't have something to base their decision on, they may put it in a completely wrong place. Amazon's kinda the same way. They look at the categories you select, they look the words you're giving them, they look at certain components. And by the way, we did test this, which is where if they're like, ‘Oh, this is a fantasy book,' then they're looking for certain words in your book description to help say, ‘Okay, yep. This is definitely a fantasy book. Okay, yep. This is definitely this kind of fantasy. Oh, we should show it to the lit RPG people because…yep, got it.' See what I'm saying? They're looking at all those things but they really want the input to solidify it the most. Joanna: Interesting times. And it's so funny because I feel like we've been talking about keywords and categories forever but we have to because it's important to help people find our books. I also think it's interesting for our ads, it's interesting for what we're writing next. You have just launched Atticus, which is a web-based app for book formatting, which I've been playing with and everyone is very excited about because of course many of us use Vellum, which is not available for PC. And you've got a web-based app, so it's easy to use, it's for everyone. What need did you see in the community that Atticus is intending to meet? Dave: You hit it right on the head there. The first thing was that there are a lot of authors that use PC computers. And the bummer part was that, like you said, Vellum only worked for Mac. And so, a good percentage of authors either had to use a Mac In Cloud thing to get it to sort of work or they had to buy the Mac computer, which…crazy but, like, a lot of people had to because to create beautiful, professional format of books, you needed something like that to do it. Let me start by saying that we launched atticus.io at the day of this recording but what it really is, is it's Vellum but works for Mac and PC and Chromebook and Linux, and it's currently $100 cheaper, and it's got a lot of features and more customization. On top of that, it's also got a writing space where you can write in it. It's clean. We're adding so many different features to the writing component. I just want to make that very clear. That is where we are at at the moment of this recording. What I want to do with the program and the reason why we designed it the way it was, and we put so much under the hood in preparation for this, I describe what it will be with the statement of if Scrivener, Google Docs, and Vellum got together and had a baby, its name would be Atticus. As an author, we use maybe Scrivener for writing our book or we use Word. The point though is we do our writing in this one software. And then when time comes and we're going to work with our editor, we now either email back and forth, back and forth, back and forth with our Word doc or maybe we got one of those editors that are okay with Google Docs where we can upload at Google Docs and we can work in real-time and we can comment and communicate. But the moment that you're done with that, then you have to export it and upload it into another software in order to format it. One of the problems I've had is that by the time I've done this entire process, I end up with seven different Word files on my computer that say final, final-final, all caps, this is the final, final edited, final ready for formatting. And what's crazy is I never delete them. I don't know why but it's like this hesitation that I'd delete the wrong one. Now, generally, as I'm working on it, I know which one it's supposed to be and finally, when I format it and I upload it to Amazon, I'm like, ‘Great,' and I just grab them all and I save them in a file. But as we were talking about, sometimes you go back to your previous books and you need to update it or you're like, ‘Oh, man. I need to create a large print version because that is a great opportunity or I need to do this.' And then I'm like, ‘Uh-oh. Which final one?' This has been a major pain point that I've had for years. And so, my absolute goal with Atticus is to create, shall we say, the one ring to bind them all. And in this case, an author can plot, write, collaborate, and format, and they can keep every one of their books right there. They can make simple changes, they can update backmatter with a click of a button. They don't have to go find files and update files and reload files or, heaven forbid, have to pay for a formatter again because they wanted to change something. It's all nice and organized. And the collaboration thing is the thing I'm most excited about. Joanna: That's what I just wrote down. I was like, ‘Collaboration? Tell me about that.' So, you mean you can cowrite with other people? Dave: Cowrite, edit, work with ARC readers. See, here's what this is going to look like. We already have the UI design for it. We've already done a lot of the work under the hood. This is coming out, like, rapid. We are focusing on improving the writing section first. We're now in what I call phase two. Actually, today I think we added book goals and writing habit trackers. We're going to be adding plotting capability. Also, automatic integration and working with Plottr and some of those other programs as well. Character cards, notes. We're focused on that and then we move into collaboration. This is what collaboration will look like. Say you've written your book in your writing pane. You're good to go there. All right, great. And it's time to work with your editor. You can click a button and you can put in their email address and it will send them a link. The editor doesn't have to own Atticus. They can click the link and it will open up in a browser and we're designing it to look just like Word document. To act just like Word document where track changes, all the buttons are where they would expect because let me tell you, talking to a whole bunch of editors, they're like, ‘I like Word.' I'm like, ‘Yeah, we'll give you Word, I promise'. They can literally start making changes right there. Now, what's awesome for the author is you can see it real-time, and you can accept the changes or reject the changes. You can communicate with them and you can go back and forth. And the editors can mark when a chapter's ready for you. Now you can work in real-time together. You're not having to email back and forth. You don't have seven different copies that say final-final on it. And when the moment comes and you're done, okay, you've worked with the editor, everything's good to go, you can secure their access. They lose access to the book. So, there's no copies floating around. Same thing goes with collaborating with another writer. Now, in this case, both writers do have to own the program just because of how it coordinates and communicates. But when you go to collaborate with another author, you can click a button, send them the link. It attaches the project together so you both have it in your dashboard on Atticus. You can even assign permissions and capabilities because, let's face it, especially when two authors are collaborating, I do highly recommend this but you need to make one of them the person who makes the call, the final call, and establish that from the beginning. But maybe there are certain permissions. Maybe this is a new writer that you're working with as a lead writer and you don't want them to be able to do certain things. You can change those permissions and send it over, and that way you guys can work together in that respect. The other thing is we talked about ARC readers. When the time comes and you want to send a copy of your book to advance review copy readers or beta readers, depending on at what point you send it to them, you can send them that link. They do not need to own Atticus. They can read your book. They can leave comments. You can even choose if other ARC readers see the comments that others leave or if you want it just to be that only you see their comment, which I personally prefer because sometimes when one ARC reader comments something, then all of a sudden, it triggers the rest of them to think that that's a big issue and then you're like, ‘Oh, that must be a huge issue.' And it's like, ‘No, it's not really. It's just they all saw it.' And you're like, ‘Oh, yeah. I guess that kinda makes sense, and so I'll write it in there too.' And so, you can add that permission. Here's the thing that I love most. We're making it so they cannot copy and paste. They cannot download. There is no copy of your book just floating around. And then finally there's a pane where you can see everybody who has access to your book through Atticus, their name and what permission they have and you can click an X and you can just take away their permission just like that. So now you have full control of knowing who has what access to your book and when you're ready, they don't have it anymore. And this, to me, is really important because we've all heard of the ARC copy that got out there to pirates. We've all heard some of the horror stories that are out there. We wanted to create something that gave authors the power to collaborate in any way that they need to while also controlling who has access to their book at all times. Joanna: I think that's really cool. I think the collaboration stuff is something that many authors are doing and it can be really frustrating. I recently did The Relaxed Author with Mark Leslie Lefebvre and discovered that he likes MS Word and I was working in Scrivener and it was a bit of mess at times, to be honest. We should also say that you don't have to collaborate. You can just keep it all in yourself. You can just keep it simple and do the writing, do the formatting, and then export. You can keep it really locked down if that's what you want. Dave: Exactly. And all the file management is right there. For example you formatted the book. Excellent. Now, ‘Oh, man, I need to change the backmatter because I want to change up my biography or I want to change up my also by page to list my latest book.' Well, you just go right in there, you type it in, you click, click export, done. What's really cool is we actually have a new feature that came out…well, actually no, it's coming out tomorrow. It'll be out when this publishes, for sure. And what it is is that you can create a template page. Say, for example, you design your also by page and you can apply it to all the books you have in your Atticus. And then the moment that you go to update one…okay, so say you go into book seven and you update that particular page, Atticus will say, ‘Hey, do you want us to apply this to all these books?' And it will list all the books that you used that page on. And you click a button and bam, all the books you have, have it. Joanna: That really is killer. Dave: I am so jazzed about that because that's my least favorite thing to do is, ‘Oh, crikey, all right. Let me go into this one. Let me copy and paste them, put them over there in this.' Nope. One-click and it's applied to all your books. And again, we have that list of the books that would be affected so that way you can verify you didn't make a mistake. Joanna: Say there was someone who had quite a lot of books already and they wanted to back-engineer this, could they load…I guess the trouble is the formatted, finished-formatted books are in PDF rather than any other format. One would have to reupload the Word docs again if we wanted to back-engineer that process. Could we load PDFs or…? Dave: You could load EPUB and MOBI. That's one of the things by the time this comes out, we will have that where any of the EPUB version or MOBI version of your book, you can just throw it right into Atticus. There's some programming language that may cause it to be wonky and by wonky, you might have to do about five minutes of just rearranging some things and be like, ‘Oh, no, that was a chapter. That image needs to be changed out.' We wanted to make sure that Atticus would accept EPUB and MOBI uploads, not just Word documents because for those who've already published a book…like say, for example, you paid for a formatter, okay, to format your first book… Joanna: You want to keep that. Dave: Right. Well, just throw the EPUB or the MOBI file into Atticus. There it is. And you can make subtle changes and now you can quickly build up your, shall we say, Rolodex of all the books you've previously published. That was a very important thing for us because a lot of users have already done books and they're going to want to have them in their database, in their dashboard. Now, one of the other things that's really important to note about Atticus is, like you said, it is an online program. It is browser-based. But we used a special programing thing called a PWA and that's a Progressive Web App. What I think of Progressive Web Apps is the best of both worlds between a downloadable software and an online software. The reason for this is that with the Progressive Web App, you can access your books on any computer. You open up Chrome, go to Atticus and bam, log in. And there you have it. It's there. So, if you want to use it on your laptop, your desktop, that's cool. But what's awesome about Progressive Web Apps is that if you have Chrome open, you can click a button and it will download a copy of it onto your computer. You'll have an icon there. You can open it up and you can again work inside of your Atticus. Where this becomes pretty cool is that we have the ability that you can save your…we call it a snapshot. You can have a backup of your entire thing saved on your computer. So, you can save it on your computer while the cloud also protects you. For authors, this is the best of both worlds because, heaven forbid, something happens to your computer and you didn't have all your files on all these things, you're toast, whereas we back it up on our system, you can back it up on your computer, and this gives you a lot more security in that respect. So, it's the best of both worlds in that respect. The other thing too is that the only time you need an internet connection for Atticus is when you upload a new document. So a Word doc or a MOBI or EPUB, or when you go to hit export, okay. And also to log in initially. When you download or whatever, you just need to log in at that point, and then you're good to go. That's it. And when we add the collaboration component, you'll probably want to be connected to the internet to collaborate with people. But that being said, though, any other function to the program, you can use offline. If you are going off to the woods, no problem. Just make sure you've logged into Atticus. Go off to the woods, do your writing and the moment and you can again save it onto your computer as you're doing it there as well but the moment that you have an internet connect, it'll kick in. One of the things that we're doing for collaboration with authors is that if you're collaborating with another author, the way we're going to set it up is that you can lock a chapter so that the other author can't touch anything in there while you're, say, on a flight and doing your work. This is our way to make sure that there's no confliction issues where it's like, ‘Okay, who wrote it first or who touched what?' And so that's the way we're getting around that. Joanna: Sounds like you've got a lot coming out with Atticus. It sounds like you're going to cover everything, which is very, very cool. You haven't actually mentioned what it outputs. What file formats and is it compatible with KDP and Ingram for print, for example? Dave: We export PDF. We export EPUB. And probably by the time this comes out, we export in MOBI as well. Even though Amazon doesn't accept MOBI, we found that for people who want to send a copy to another author, or as a reader magnet, or as an ARC that they actually want to send, it's best to send a MOBI because it's much easier to upload on your Kindle. We're going to have that as an export as well. When it comes to formatting, when you're in a book and you click trim sizes and everything, we not only include all of the trim sizes for IngramSpark and KDP, we actually help to list which ones they accept, which ones are recommended, and we have an extensive list there as well as ones that are outside of those markets as well. Joanna: That's really good, and I had to look. I was pleased to see that because it just happened to me with the new hardback version. I've been doing hardbacks with IngramSpark for years now and I've used the 5-by-8, which is what I use for my paperbacks. KDP print doesn't accept 5-by-8 for hardback. So now I'm like, ‘Oh, we have to redo the files.' And now I'm moving all my hardback to 5.5-by-8.5, whatever it is because of that. Knowing which trim sizes they both accept, this is actually really important. Dave: Exactly. And we're going to be expanding on that as well. Another thing that's really important to note is that we just released the large print options as well. But what's really interesting is that we go beyond what other formatting software does and we actually do the recommendations, shall I say, of the U.K. Associates for Acceptable Formats as well as the American Foundation for the Blind. We don't just make the font bigger. We also use the font they recommend, the sans serif, 18-point font size, larger line spacing, the space paragraphs instead of indents, and ragged right text as well. So, we've made it that our large print is in line as possible to help those in need that are visually impaired. Joanna: Well, then I've got another one for you. What about workbooks? Dave: Yes. Workbooks. We have a bunch of nonfiction capabilities like endnotes and footnotes which…boy. Man, that was a feat. Joanna: That's hardcore. Dave: Yeah. There's a lot more that I want to do for the nonfiction side as well. So, developing the giant workbooks and space, I don't think that we're very capable of doing that. I still think that InDesign is probably the best for that because you want to create these laid out images and spacing. I will say I don't think we're capable but it's one of those things where I really want to tackle, especially as a nonfiction author myself. Joanna: For my workbooks, I keep it pretty simple, which is there's a question at the top of the page and then there's lines. Dave: We can handle that. I'm thinking more like the giant, you know…what do they call those? The no-content books? The giant ones that people are making with crazy stuff. Joanna: There's a lot of crackdown on those anyway. For my Your Author Business Plan, for example, the workbook edition is all the questions from the book with lines so that people can answer the questions in the workbook. It's a companion book but I do them at a 6-by-9 size. So, it's really just another book but it's got some lines in. so it's not a no-content. It's just, I guess, low content. Dave: Got it. Yeah. We can absolutely handle that. Joanna: Ah, interesting. Dave: Another thing that I'm really excited about that we just launched too that makes us really unique is you can also design your own custom chapter design. And that's two-page, full-bleed images, images that even can go over the words or behind the words and things like that. There's some really cool designs that we're making. But what's awesome is that once you've designed the look and feel, you can choose your fonts, the location, everything. You can save that template if you want and use it in your other books as well. Joanna: Very cool. So, a lot to play with. Tell people where they can find it and any more details that you want to share. Dave: You can find it at atticus.io and it's only $147 for unlimited books and e-books. Joanna: Is that per year or one-off or…? Dave: No. Just a one-off. I am not a fan of subscriptions, so nope. That's a one-off. Joanna: Well, that's very reasonable. Dave: And that also includes all upgrades, new features, you name it. Just like I've done with Rocket. Joanna: I've been playing with it myself and I think there's a lot of potential and, of course, as ever, you're very good at updating things when the services change their requirements, or new things like the hardback, for example, that's been quite a recent thing with KDP. I'm very excited. I think this is fantastic. Where else can people find you and everything you do online? Dave: If anybody has any questions or maybe we talked about something that they're kinda like, ‘Wait a second. Huh? What was that?' You can always find me at kindlepreneur.com. I've got a contact page there. I'll be more than happy to help. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dave. That was great. Dave: Absolutely, Joanna. And again, thank you for having me.The post Amazon Keywords And Atticus For Writing And Book Formatting With Dave Chesson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What projects are worth pitching for film and TV? What do you need to include in your pitch? Why are there more opportunities for writers now? Chrissy Metge talks about these questions and more. In the intro, the US Justice Department sues to block the Penguin Random House acquisition of Simon & Schuster [The Guardian]; Kobo Plus launches in Australia and NZ [Kobo]; Audible launches unlimited subscription in India [The New Publishing Standard]; Check your print prices for Ingram [IBPA]; Is it time to raise ebook prices? [6 Figure Authors] This podcast episode is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo ecosystem. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.  Chrissy Metge has 20 years animation experience working on projects including The Hobbit, Superman Man of Steel, Fast and Furious 7, and Jungle Book. She's the co-founder of Fuzzy Duckling Media and Duckling Publishing, specializing in books and shows for children, and is also a creative brand consultant. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Changes in the film and TV industry in the last 20 yearsThe kinds of content that animation studios are interested inHow and when to pitch an idea to a studioTips for good pitching techniqueDo you need to write the scripts for the stories you’re pitching?The importance of figuring out your target audienceHow does the financial side work?What the future of entertainment may holdBalancing business and creativity You can find Chrissy Metge at ChrissyMetge.com and on Twitter @ChrissyNZ Transcript of Interview with Chrissy Metge Joanna: Chrissy Metge has 20 years animation experience working on projects incluing ‘The Hobbit,' ‘Superman Man of Steel,' ‘Fast and Furious 7,' and ‘Jungle Book.' She's the cofounder of Fuzzy Duckling Media and Duckling Publishing, specializing in books and shows for children, and is also a creative brand consultant. Welcome, Chrissy. Chrissy: Thank you. So excited to be here. Joanna: Oh, there's so much for us to talk about. First up, tell us a bit more about you and why you have moved into books alongside your animation work. Chrissy: I've been in the industry for almost 20 years now. I'm a Kiwi from New Zealand, living in London with my son and husband. And my son was born six weeks early. I was actually working on ‘Jungle Book' at the time at Weta in Wellington. And I was supposed to finish up the next day and have my leaving flowers and all of that. And my son decided to come with a crash and a roar and a bang, six weeks early it turned out, and they sent my leaving flowers to the hospital. But we're both fine, by the way, just in case you're wondering. I always wanted to write, I always did write, and around so many creators and writers and directors and producers, and I always had a few ideas at the back of my head. When my son was born, my brain hadn't had a chance to stop. He slept a lot as newborns do and I just was like, ‘What do I do with my time?' So, while he was sleeping, I decided to write some books, and it went on from there. Joanna: Wow, and I'm sure there're some parents listening going, ‘How on earth did you manage all that?' Your career does make me feel tired! Let's talk about right now. Because you're currently working on a show for Netflix. You've worked for Disney and other big studios. How has the film and TV industry changed over your nearly 20 years? Chrissy: It has changed so much, obviously, with all the streaming giants that have come in and the other big companies buying each other. I was at ILM when Disney came and bought them out for I think it was $4 billion for the ‘Star Wars' brand. And, they've changed a lot. I think with the streaming, you've got access to so much more choice. You're not going to the theater, spending $50 for 3 people to go see a film or anything like that. You can turn on your TV and your streaming channel and you've got so much access to that. And then because of that, so much more content is needed. We're all aware of what's going on around us. And we want to be involved with all of the content around us rather than going to see a great big ‘Transformers' blockbuster or something like that. We want to watch things that are part of everyday life. It's been a really interesting ride, that's for sure. Joanna: Do you think the changes have accelerated due to the pandemic? Chrissy: Oh, absolutely. I work in the animation film industry just to distinguish that. So we've never been busier because you couldn't film with the pandemic. So all of a sudden, all of the animation studios are absolutely swamped while our sisters and brothers in arms in the live action studios are struggling a lot. It was like a catch-22. Here I'm feeling really awful for people getting furloughed and losing their jobs and then all of my other friends and people and colleagues are getting more and more work and especially in the adult parts of this. I work in kids animation but right now I'm doing an adult animation and because you couldn't film adult content, there's been a cry out more for adult animated content to fill those gaps so as I say never before has it been so much content wanted so quickly. Joanna: What do you mean by adult animation? I guess everyone has got in their heads more cartoons, but what might come under that? Chrissy: That's right. So obviously anime has been a big part of our life from Japan for a good many years and now with those stories coming out through there have been very successful. Animation can be written for adults watching it not just children, maybe there might be some swear words, or there might be some more adult type scenes, profanities used, things like that, that you wouldn't normally see in animation and more adult content that you would watch as a drama but as animations. It's interesting to see that industry turning that way to give content to adults when you can't film it. Joanna: What do you actually do as an animator? Do you do the drawing? Do you write? What is your role? Chrissy: I used to be an animator a long time ago. I was at one of the very first schools of 3D animation they opened up in New Zealand, one of three girls I think in the class at the time. I realized early on that I can't draw, so you don't want me to draw, but I fell in love with cartoons very, very early on in comics. My father had a huge, beautiful comic book collection. So I said to myself, ‘I just want to be involved.' I trained as a 3D animator, and my first internship was through a 2D animation Disney studio that was in New Zealand. I finished that internship knowing everything there is to do about 2D, even though I was doing 3D. My very first job was on New Zealand's animated sitcom ‘Bro'Town,' which is like ‘The Simpsons' of the South Pacific. [From Joanna: This Beached clip from Bro Town is a classic!] I got to tell my parents quite happily that I got to get paid to color in all day, which was so much fun. And then I just fell into front-of-house management. So I just got coffees and paid invoices and helped organize crew and things like that. And I stayed there ever since. I've worked from the bottom right up to the top. Now I'm producing a show. I have over 200 crew in 3 countries around the world. And I love it. My job is basically to make sure the show gets done on time and on budget in a nutshell. Joanna: Wow, I think that's so cool. And in terms of, obviously, most people listening, there'll be lots of people listening who are interested in that creative side. But in terms of the actual writing do you think there are more jobs for writers? You mentioned that there's so much content needed and obviously there's scripts and things that need to be written and all the other stuff. Are there more jobs? Is that the way forward? Chrissy: Yes, absolutely. Every piece of content that you watch, there's a script that's written for it. The constant need for writers has also increased, as the need for content. So every time a TV show is on or animation or film or anything like that, absolutely, people are hunting for writers. Joanna: I think this is so interesting, and of course, animation, there's a lot of use of computer software. I'm sure there are a lot of AI-type tools coming in. With an increase in technology, we're also seeing an increase in need for writers. Chrissy: Absolutely. And I think you had someone on your show earlier on about the gaming industry. It's the merging. The film industry and the animation TV industry and vice versa are all kind of merging with the game industry with their technology. So a lot of that game technology is now available to us to make things much faster and bring those powerful computer times down, which can be a cause for why things take so long. Now that the gaming technology is coming into play and everything else in the virtual reality, it's a huge part and it's coming across, which is so much fun to see that. Joanna: Such exciting times. Now, most writers, myself included, we would all love a film or a TV deal with I'd say one of the big studios, but I don't think it means that anymore. I guess it means we would love Netflix or Amazon Studios or anyone, most of us would love anyone. You work with a lot of people, you do pitch consultancy, but let's start from the top. What kind of projects should we even consider trying to pitch for these different types of media? Chrissy: I think that's a really, really good question. The trends change quite a lot. So I would do your homework as well with what those trends are. For instance, because of the pandemic, with children's programming or children's animation, they've really wanted a sense of community, a sense of safety, and they wanted it to be about real kids. They weren't really into a cat show or a dog show or an alien coming down from a planet show. They really wanted all the shows to be with that community in mind and to let kids know that you can still have fun at home, or you can still go out and be with your friends and all of that. So that's been a huge trend that has come out recently because of the pandemic. But then they'll want a dog show or a cat show or an alien show. And all of this information can be on all of their websites so you can look up Disney and you can see what the trends are purely by what's on there, what they're showing right now. And a lot of them will have in there what they're looking for. You can even submit to their platforms as well. A lot of them they're open from time to time. The other thing I would really recommend is, each streamer or each company are very specific. For instance, Disney are very female, one main protagonist led, is what they like in their shows. Apple are very much a bit glossy; they want their shows to probably be something that could appear in a magazine. So it's not just always about the story, it's got to have that match to the company that's involved. Netflix are very original. They like something quite different that no one else was doing before. If your story is a common story, it would need to have some kind of twist in there that hasn't been done or is quite different. So each company is quite different to each other. I really recommend having universal appeal. If your show is set in Australia, for instance, it probably won't appeal that much to the Netflix global team. You might want to just pitch into Australia, for instance, or if you did have an Australian show, it needs a more of a global thing to go with it. Joanna: Like you said, you have to do your homework. There's no single answer to this. And as for trends, the trend now for example, where I've just finished a novel and I've put an author's note that said, ‘Yes, I have completely ignored the pandemic. No one is wearing a mask. There's no discussion of COVID. I've just decided to ignore it.' I feel like there was a point where people wanted pandemic content. And now I feel like almost people are sick of it. Can a trend appear and then disappear? Chrissy: Absolutely. I think it's because I do pitch quite a lot. At that time, they'll tell you, no, they're not looking for that. But you can bring that back out in six months' time and go back around again. So it's like a lucky dip. Joanna: When you say you pitch a lot, tell us, what does that mean? What is the process of pitching? Chrissy: When I started, I had no idea either. And I've been working in the industry for a long time. I wanted to get involved with pitching original content and my ideas and other people's ideas. So I was doing some research. There's three or four or five festivals that you can go to as an average person off the street yourself and go and pitch. And so I thought, ‘Why can I do that?' I did some research about what you should have with you, and I booked a ticket to Miami, and I went to an amazing festival there called ‘Kidscreen.' You literally pay a ticket, and you rock on up and you do speed pitching and with, literally, the industry's best. I pitched to Disney and Aardman and all these amazing studios because they're looking for ideas. It doesn't matter if you are super famous or not or you've done like 1000 things, you can buy a ticket and go to any of these festivals and see what it's like. They've all been online, which has been so great, actually, because they're much cheaper and you don't have to travel quite far to get there. So that's the place where I started. From there, I have all the contacts that I can use and keep reusing and follow up with, time and time again, and I don't have to go to the festival. So I can just pitch to them directly due to those contacts I made at those festivals. And that's what I do now. So as it comes around I'll go, ‘I've got an idea. I've got a new bible. May I pitch this?‘ And they'll say, ‘Yeah, do it.' Joanna: Gosh, so many questions. So first of all, I want to go to the speed pitching because I have done this. And I don't know whether it's an introvert thing, a British thing, or just a thing that it's really, really hard. And you have to be pretty quick, don't you? What are your top tips for speed pitching? Chrissy: You do have to be very fast. I would write it down and almost have a script. You have to say what your lead statement is. So: a woman gets murdered in the dark and she's being chased by aliens. Then I would say what the format is. Is it 90 minutes? Is it two hours? Is it a short film? Say what your audience is. It's for children, it's for, you know, etc., etc. And then that's it pretty much. Joanna: Right. And then they know immediately whether or not they're interested. And hopefully you've also picked someone who might be interested in that. There's no point in me as an adult thriller writer pitching at a children's festival, for example. Chrissy: Exactly. And also they know what they've got on their slate. So you might have this amazing idea and think it's absolutely original, but they say, ‘Oh, we've just signed up for that one thing. We don't want another one.' For instance, if they have a dog show, they don't want another dog show. So when you do your lead statement, you give a brief synopsis of it, who it's targeted at, they'll know straight away whether they want to talk to you more. Joanna: Obviously again, we're assuming that most people listening are authors first. So we have a book or a series of books, possibly even a whole world but you mentioned the word bible. Would we need a story bible when pitching or can we just have books or what is the process there? Chrissy: If you're pitching in person, they might flick through some documentation. But usually, they want to know very quickly what you're about and what your idea is about. So it's nice to have your book but it's not completely necessary. But you will need it for electronic pitching or electronic/digitally sending it to them to follow up, but you don't need it to start with. I always tell people if you've got a book and obviously you can't meet with them face to face, you will need a document to send about how it could be transferred into an animated show or a film or a piece of content. Joanna: I did a screenwriting course at the NFTS, and there was an agent there and we all had our practice pitches. The point he made was why don't you have your traditional publishing agent pitch this? Because that's what they do. They have the relationships, or, why don't you have a film agent? I felt it was very off-putting for someone who is an independent author to get into this. Can independent authors even consider pitching their books or do we need an agent? Chrissy: I agree. It can be overwhelming as well. But to be honest, I think all of those roles have gone out the door, especially with the pandemic. To be honest, before that, I think they were also going out the door. Film agents still definitely exist. But nowadays, it's not a necessary deal to have that. It's finding those connections yourself and getting there. And if you do it from you, it's almost better. They want to hear from the creators, they want to hear from the authors, they want to hear the heart and soul that is around your story more than an agent. And of course, there still are agents and there's still a big industry for that. But with the traditional publishers, they do have a great list that they can go and pitch to media and normally it's the other way around. Normally it's the distributors and the broadcasters that will go to the agents asking if they've got a great book or something that they think they could pitch. But they don't have all of the materials ready, if you know what I mean. So if you turn up and you're there and you've got all your materials ready, you've thought about it, you've got a strong pitch, you've got your bible or documentation or you've thought about how it could work, your pitch is not going to be better than an agency's pitch or anyone else's. Joanna: So when you do this for other people, let's pretend it's me. What sort of things do you ask authors when you said they're having a strong pitch in the materials? What would you ask authors to have? Chrissy: My first question is, what does your dream deal look like? Because it's about expectations and if we don't know that at the start. One example is one woman I'm working with, she's amazing and she said, ‘My dream deal is to get this on Disney. I have no interest in working with Netflix.' And that was just something that she was really passionate about, and I go, ‘Okay, got it.' So I always ask, ‘What is your dream to get with your book or your story? Where do you want to go? Do you just want to be small and make a small indie short film or do you want to go massive?' Because then I can quickly either burst the bubble or help them along the steppingstones to get closer to that. If you said to me, Joanna, you wanted to create an X film out of your books that's going to cost $100 million, that's fine, that's absolutely fine. But we need to cater towards that, and it will probably be a very long journey as opposed to pitching to a children's series and you can rehash that for the next season and the next season. Joanna: Well that's the thing when I did pitch my book, it was the first in my Map Walker trilogy, the agent said, ‘That's going to cost between $100 and $200 million to make.' And I was like, ‘Okay, thanks.' I think you're right. That consideration of budget and what it would take to make that. Although it's interesting, even thinking about animation or even, I've now been thinking about audio drama for that project because, let's face it, audio drama is a lot cheaper. But then I've got another series which is a detective in London and that as a budget, would be a whole lot smaller so I think. For example, Jessica Jones would be more like my detective series although it's set in London. You talk about expectations; is it a case of finding shows that we think are similar and looking at what's entailed in that? Chrissy: Exactly. It's better to have that and then if you want to go down the road we can create a pitch package with you to help you be on the right path as opposed to just putting it in the dark. You would need a script and some visual aids and a real strong premise and all of those things. Yes, $100 million is a lot of money but who's to say someone doesn't want to make it for $100 million as well? You don't know until you pitch it. And then we'd say, ‘What have you got to lose?' Like really, what have you got to lose?' You can only get a no, but you've done the process, you've got it all there and it might be a no this year, but it might not be no next year or in 10 years as the industry changes and the trends change and with big global giants too, like Netflix and Disney and all of those, they've got so much money. Joanna: Well, it's interesting that, ‘What have you got to lose?' I did go down this rabbit hole a few years ago and I definitely do not want to do screenwriting, but I feel like there's a difference between being a rights holder, creator of IP who wants to license that in some way. An author who wants to do this doesn't have to write the script, right? If you have a pitch, and you mentioned visual aids, what are you talking about there? Chrissy: You definitely don't have to be the person that writes the scripts. I've got a lovely team around me that write scripts for me and for people that I work with, which is great. So you don't have to be the person that does everything. I also have an amazing bible pitch, bible designer, she's in Russia, that she designs all my bibles for me. And in visual aids, creating a visual element to tell your story. You've got your cover, and everything like that, well, children's books are the easiest. What I do with people is they've got all the content there, the illustrated content already exists. So it's literally pulling out the illustrated content into a pitch visual aid and expanding on that. If you've got a character called Mary and she collects fish, whatever it is, is talking about her dislikes, her strengths, her weaknesses, and putting that into the pitch bible, to talk about that in the story. Themes are a huge one, what is the theme of your journey? What do you want to get across? So it's pulling out all of those little details and giving them a visual aid. And when I say visual, it doesn't have to be characters, it could be scenery. It's just putting it together in a format that is visual, because on your books, it's all written words. It's just pulling out those things that are important to you into a PDF document or whatever you want to show as a visual feeling for your story. For instance, I work with one book, which is about cancer, and it's a film for children, but we use color to help with that mood and getting that theme across so it's not too scary. So more darker times are gray and black and white. And then when it gets better, things are more colorful, and in that pitch bible, it reflects that. So it's like a journey through those emotions as well as what you've written. Joanna: I think that's really interesting. And I feel like, let's face it, a lot of writers get quite intellectual about words because that's what we do. But what you talked about there with theme and feeling and emotion and color and I feel like this is the struggle, right? The Mapwalker trilogy, for example, they're quite short books as they're not quite YA, but so it's like 180,000 words total. And in my head, 180,000 words, to now just roll that up into theme, feeling, and emotion is really difficult. We get so obsessed with these details of plot, and the interesting research and this particular character's really cool. But that's too much, isn't it, for a pitch? Chrissy: It is too much. That's right. That is too much. And that's the hardest part with authors, and that's why I love working with authors because it's all in your head. So it's literally I'm just pulling it out and putting it onto paper. But the hardest, hardest, hardest part for them is to write 10 pages of a Word document about their book. I put the headings in for them and fill out those 10 pages. Because as you say, you're taking 180,000 words, and I'm asking you to put those details into 10 pages, and then the prettiness and all of the visual stuff comes after that. It's making sure those 10 pages, in words to start with, are representing your book and a shortened version, then I can pull out the colors and the moods and the emotions and from what you've condensed it down to. Joanna: So fascinating. There is very good TV now. Just some excellent TV. And I think that mood and emotion is the key. The success of ‘Bridgerton,' for example, which hit in the winter here during the pandemic, and I'm not very romantic, my husband really is. But I was like, ‘This is exactly what I need. I don't want to watch violence, I want to watch some romantic thing.' And of course, it was absolutely huge at the time, and still is huge, obviously. And that was partially set here in Bath. So I was very happy about that. But it's that emotional side is so important. Something I need to do more in my own writing is focus on that feeling as an overarching thing as opposed to getting obsessed with everything else. Although we have to do both, I suppose. Chrissy: Yes. Joanna: Do you pitch all kinds of projects, or do you focus mainly on children's? Chrissy: I do pitch all kinds. I focus more on animation than film just because that's my experience of working, which has always usually been with animation or visual effects. And just to help with the different visual effects, it's done with live action. For instance, ‘Transformers,' and ‘Fast and Furious,' and all of those types of things, it's filmed but we put in all of the effects and animation that goes on top of that. So that's more of my experience of working. That's the kind of stuff that I usually help with or pitch around. Joanna: Interesting. And then it just on you personally because you obviously now, as we talked about at the beginning, you have a book publishing and media company for children's projects. You also have for your own books, which you turn into other things. And it's great to look at your website, because as you said, you've got the characters, you've got some songs, you've already done all these kind of IP things. If you're planning a book, what are the things that people can consider in terms of these other intellectual property possibilities? Chrissy: Again, it goes back to what is your target audience? Is it in your home country or is it in a global market? But for me,I'm doing a children's book at the moment that is specifically for the UK and I wanted to do that before I go home. You need to know what it's for, and if you are going for a global type, film, or TV series or book that's easier to pitch, obviously. But having said that, also, if you are going for more of your own countries, or in surrounding areas, or a particular field or a theme, you can apply for local funding in your own countries, a lot of creative money is available to do that with your own countries. New Zealand's got it, Australia's got it. I'm sure there are so many other countries that have that where they will give you money for even developing it into a script, which is something you should look into. But of course, with that, you'd have to have local content within your local areas. Joanna: It's interesting, earlier you said, ‘What have you got to lose? ‘ And it feels to me that the biggest thing that one loses is time, and we only have a certain amount of time. Everything in this process, as you said, when you started out, you went to all the festivals you did that. It's about developing relationships and knowing how it all works. Is it better to work on the next book rather than chasing the remote possibility of a film/TV deal? I think that's the biggest question that people often have. Chrissy: Exactly. Time is so precious, isn't it? I know. It's the hardest part of everything, time. But I guess it goes back to what are your goals? What do you actually want to achieve in life? If it is your dream to get your book made into a film or a TV show one day, then do it. I know that sounds really simple, but even if you put aside 10 minutes in the morning, or 10 minutes in the afternoon, or whatever it works, you just chip away at it. That's how I've done all of mine. They don't happen overnight. They don't happen tomorrow. It's a little bit each day in the pockets of life that you find that I help everybody and work on my own bits and pieces and you get there, you do get there. Joanna: That's actually a really good tip. That's how I wrote my first books in the first five years of having a day job and building up this business was all on the side in between doing the rest of things. We all have to make that choice. One of the reasons that people think they want these deals is because they think there's a lot of money involved. Obviously, you're a producer now, which is different. Tell us a bit more about how the money works in film and TV for the writer. Chrissy: That's a really good question and I'll do my best. It's different for every studio, obviously, and it's also different for every project. For instance, one of the writers I'm working with, he did it on spec, which means he wrote it because he loved it. This was going back to the beautiful cancer story. He absolutely loved it. So he wrote it out of his hand. And then if it gets picked up, we've agreed that he will get a certain percentage of that deal. And that would go into the pitch, if it got along to that part of it. If we start talking money and budgets and things like that, it's like this is the writer, he's the original writer, he would get a percentage of X budget to go back to him or he would get a writers fee out of it. And that's one way to do it. The other way is obviously pitching yourself as a writer of the show. So you can do your pitch without the script. I do that all the time. That's very easy. And part of that, if they pick it up, is developing the script with you. The great thing about being an author, and if you did want to write your own script, that's a great package for them. They would probably look at purchasing or co-joining the IP with you or just buying it, buying the idea. And with that, you can ask to be a writer that goes on there, to be paid to write your movie. Joanna: There's a very good book called Hollywood Versus the Author. Have you read that? Chrissy: I've got it here next to me. Joanna: I listened to it on audio as well and I've got it in print. And that is a must read. I think in order to be, as you say realistic and there's some good stories in there. There's some bad stories. There's some absolutely awful stories in there. It's buyer beware, isn't it, really? Chrissy: Yes. And I think I might say it's gotten better, but I think there's more options now, since the pandemic and all of this content's come out. And I think there's more conversations going on with the IP owners and the writers and everything like that and there's way more collaboration going on between everybody too. So it's not so cutthroat and you have to do this, and you have to do that. You have to work together to achieve that. And I think that's been a really great thing. That's an outcome that's coming out of it. Joanna: I think that is interesting. And I do think collaboration is something that perhaps authors are not so good at because we do tend to work alone. If people do cowrite, it's often just one other person, for example, whereas what you're talking about, you've got 200 crew on your neck on this project. Any tips on having a more collaborative attitude, on being open to it, but also protecting yourself? Chrissy: I think being open to it just is the struggle. I think it's easy for me because I'm working with authors and yourself, and you're already passionate about your project. I'm not dragging you through the mud and making you do it. It's the same with my crew. They're passionate about what we're making. And that makes you collaborative. Once you've started the journey and you've decided, ‘Yes, I want to go down this path,' you will find yourself being more collaborative than what you were before. At the beginning, I'm always very sensitive because it is someone's idea and story and it's your baby that you're talking about developing. And I think the people in this industry as well. And in the author community, if you've decided it's easy to be protective of it. Once you get to that point, it's hard to let go, isn't it? It's really hard to let go. Joanna: Some people are like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I want to write the screenplay. I want to be involved in it.' And then other people are like, ‘No, you've signed a licensing deal and it's gone and it's not yours anymore.' And in fact, it's better for your sanity, if you say it's not yours because an adaptation can be amazing, or it can be terrible. You don't necessarily have any control. Chrissy: My experience is before it gets to that path, I've been pitching a show for a while now and we're in month five, I think. And it's back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And we're not even at the stage of talking money or rewrites or anything like that. Once they get to that stage, they know you really well. They've had these conversations with you. They've taken the time to get to know who you are and what makes you tick. That's what I've found anyway. When it does come up to this point of talking about your involvement, everything like that, I really think the door is open and I don't think they'll shut you out, yes, from my experience at the moment. Joanna: Although as I said you might want to be. Chrissy: Yes, you might want to be. And that's even better for an author out there, if you've got an idea honestly and you want to sell it, it makes it very easy for the broadcasters and the streamers, much better. Once you've got your pitch, go ‘Wouldn't you like just want to sell this?' and you're like, ‘Okay.' Joanna: I kind of feel like that myself. I have actually got a script for this first Mapwalker novel. And then I was like, ‘Okay, do you know what? I don't think that's what I want to do.' So this is such an interesting area. And what's so funny, my mum, she's 77 or whatever. She has such a negative view of TV. We weren't allowed a TV when I was growing up and to be honest, back in the '80s, TV wasn't so good, was it? Chrissy: No. Joanna: It really wasn't very good. And she'd be like ‘TV rots your brain. It's awful.' And she's still got that attitude. She thinks computer games are terrible. She's from that generation. But finally, in the pandemic, I got her on Netflix. Obviously, we've all spent a lot more time at home watching things. Turning our IP into visual projects, I think has become perhaps even more important because people are spending more time doing that. I don't want to go too, too far ahead. But in terms of your animation, you started with 2D, you went to 3D. Do you see into the future in terms of metaverse projects or like you said, things were merging with gaming? What do you see coming for IP? Chrissy: It's so exciting. I do see in the future with my son and he's six and with the virtual reality everything, I'd love if they could interact with it because I understand with your mom, even with my son and my industry screentime and him I'm not so keen on just because I don't want to burn his brain out so early. I wish it was interactive more in front of their faces and I don't think it's going to be long, and they won't have to put the goggles on and play that game or take the goggles off. It will be part of the character and you see how they interact with the iPad now, that character can come and talk to you on your iPad, you can QR code and then there's another little thing that they can go to and another little thing that they can go to. What I was saying to one of the ladies I'm working with, she's got this amazing iconic character in her book, and I said, ‘Can't you hear her talking to you in your head?' And she's like, ‘I can actually.' I'm like, ‘Oh, amazing. Imagine if she was the narrator of your series. And then she popped up and she was a virtual reality character that appeared to the kids and started talking about traveling or scientific experiences or anything like that.' I think that's going to be so exciting in the future for them for sure. Joanna: Is that something we should even be considering, if we're looking at pitching? How might IP be used in other media like gaming, like VR, that type of thing? Chrissy: Yes, I think it's a very strong thing to do. If you're cross-platforming, it's great. One of the things I do is that if I've got a movie pitch, I also sometimes have a TV pitch alongside it. I say, ‘This could be pulled out. And these kids can be detectives, and they're going off to find a mission.' And that could be a series as a spinoff from the film, which can help sell it. If you've got an idea that could also be a game or a virtual reality experience or you've had people on the show that do board games and cards and things like that. So anything is spin-off. There's a section in your pitch you can put in there, marketing or external things that you can go with it. So you can do that, and it just makes it stronger. You don't have to. But absolutely. Joanna: It's just creating IP. It just seems like a really golden age. I know they keep saying that about TV. But it's not just TV now, it's like everything is expanding. Chrissy: Absolutely, everything. And all the streamers and everybody else wants a brand that can go across them all because that's the ideal, isn't it? That's the golden ticket. Joanna: Absolutely. Before we're out of time, so I'm circling back to you. So obviously, you have your son and your family, you've got this demanding day job, let's not forget, you actually have a day job and a publishing media and consulting business. How do you balance your time and these multiple streams of income for sanity and creativity? Chrissy: Great question. It's definitely challenging during every day, but it's a challenge I absolutely love. I think early on when I had my son, and I still did all these things, it's the flexibility to wake up in the morning and he's sick, and it all just falls apart. I led every day, especially since the pandemic, with absolutely no expectations for the day. Obviously, we've got our routines that we do every morning, and everyone does, and you stick to those as much as possible. But having no expectations of every day has changed my life. It's made me a nice mum and a nice parent and a nice boss at work and, and I expect that also for all of my crew. They have the same thing. I don't have expectations on them. And because we have such tight deadlines of filmmaking and everything is due, they all know when things are due. I've just got a fantastic crew and we all help each other. So if someone gets sick or ducks out, then another person jumps in to take over what they're doing and help out including myself. I'm always there to jump in and help out where I'm needed throughout all of my crew. And my family support is incredible. My husband, his job can be quite flexible. He can come home whenever he needs to, within reason. And he's around and if everything gets turned upside down, he's there. And we've got some cousins here in London who are incredible that are there for us. It's just using everybody around you as much as you can and vice versa. We're there for them. But I think the biggest thing is the no expectations for sure. Joanna: That's so funny because on the one hand, you say no expectations for the day. And on the other hand, you say you have tight deadlines, and obviously you achieve an incredible amount. You clearly work really hard as well as having no expectations, which is a bit weird. Chrissy: I think the no expectations as well is more emotionally. It's so easy to get frustrated or angry or upset at a situation that happened, but I've trained my emotions to have no expectations of how the day is going to go. Is it going to be the best day? Is it going to be the worst day? Is that going to get done? Or is that not going to get done? Obviously, we've all got the things we need to hit. But at the end of the day, if things happen, it is what it is. Joanna: Which we've all learned during the pandemic, of course. Chrissy: Absolutely. I think that's been the hardest mental health shift for everybody is not to jump off the handle when things don't go the way it should go. I think that's been the hardest for the crew. But the clients and the shows and the companies are all more flexible as well because of this, but we always get it done on time. That's the thing, we always get it done. Joanna: Fantastic. Where can people find you and everything you do online? Chrissy: My last name, which is hard to say but it's chrissymetge.com in there and also Duckling Publishing and Fuzzy Duckling Media. I'm also on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and all of the things, LinkedIn. So it's really easy to find them. Joanna: And if people are interested in your pitch consultancy, who are the type of clients you're interested in? Who would be the best fit? Chrissy: That's a great question. Usually, animation or visual effects is probably my strong point and more children's probably animation I can help with, with books. But, I'm happy to help with any type of pitch bible, steering you in the right direction and that can be found on my chrissymetge.com website and I've got a little consulting tab in there that you can pop into. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Chrissy. That was great. Chrissy: Thanks, Joanna.The post Pitching A Book For Film Or TV With Chrissy Metge first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Creatokia is one of the first book-specific NFT platforms and in this interview, co-founders Jens Klingelhöfer and John Ruhrmann explain what NFTs are and why they are an opportunity for authors and rights-holders. They are also the co-founders of Bookwire, which already provides digital publishing solutions for the publishing industry. After the interview, I reflect on key aspects of our conversation, and talk about why the recent YA NFT project Realms of Ruin didn't work, and why we need to ‘jump the S-curve' into a new business model. Jens Klingelhöfer and John Ruhrmann are the founders of Bookwire, which provides digital publishing solutions for the publishing industry. They have recently launched Creatokia, the world of digital originals, with an accompanying podcast (currently in German, but will soon be in English.)  You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What are NFTs and what is Creatokia?How will royalties on resale of digital originals help authors and publishers to make more money?What can go into an NFT? (for example, a limited edition ePub, a virtual ticket, community access, and more)Will the language change around NFTs? Will it become a normal part of the publishing landscape as ebooks have?Addressing environmental concerns about NFTsIntellectual property rights and why you need to specify ‘digital' or ‘ebook' or ‘audiobook' rights in a world of digital originalsHow will Creatokia work, and when will it be available? You can find Jens and John at Creatokia.com and on Twitter @creatokia Transcript of Interview with Jens and John Joanna: Welcome to the show, Jens and John. John: Hello, Joanna. Jens: Hi. Joanna: I'm so excited to talk to you today. Let's start with a question that might be basic for us, but maybe not for the listeners. What are NFTs, and what is Creatokia? John: I think the interesting things about NFTs are it's the short version of nonfungible tokens. The thing is that NFTs are on a blockchain, and you can collect them, and you can own them, and you can trade them. It's a decentralized technology. It does mean maybe for the publishing industry that you don't need another organization than the technical idea of the blockchain to trade a book or to trade very rare stuff and to give it to someone who can say, ‘I really own a digital original.' And that's the idea of Creatokia. Creatokia is the possibility — in a time of limitless supply in a digital era — to bring the original back into our world and connect two worlds, a digital world and a real world. And it's something for fans and creators and for storytellers and out of the perspective of Bookwire, the company that Jens and I founded 10, 11 years ago, the next step of digital publishing. Jens: 12 years ago when e-books came into the business, I think we all thought about, ‘Wow, this is a technical revolution.' I thought it myself. And in some ways, it was. But in some ways, it wasn't. It was just like transforming a physical book into a digital book, but it's not really a technical revolution because we are still reading, we're still using the same distribution channels. So you can buy a book on Amazon, you can buy an e-book on Amazon. That's no big difference. You just need a device for it, but looking at it like the opportunity to create digital originals in a world like John said, where everything digital has become totally available for everybody. We are in an endless sea of music, pictures, books, so having something that means something to you in your life, a digital version of something that you would've collected maybe as a rare item physically, previously, I think that's a real revolution. Joanna: What I'm also interested in is the idea of smart contracts and resale, the resale market and the fact that you can put a percentage royalty into the resale. This is completely new, right? We haven't had this. Obviously, there's been resale of physical books, but we've never been able to figure out the supply chain for money for that kind of thing. How do you think that royalty potential for the life of copyright on a blockchain might work and might bring more money to rights-holders? John: It looks like the blockchain is more collaborative in a way. So when you are on the blockchain with your product, as you said, with a smart contract, you are able to participate in the resale of your product. So it means when I buy an NFT book and I resell it because maybe it's a limited edition from a fantastic author, even from an unknown author, but now a very well-known author, it's possible to resell that NFT, and you can implement in the smart contract that the originator, the author, gains again let's say a percentage of…if it only may be 5%, but if it's sold again and again and again, you have your own distribution system on the blockchain. And that's really a hack of the idea of what book distribution was in the past. Jens: And thinking about adequate payment for authors and creators, I think this is a really big step forward because you don't have tons of intermediaries in between that get the biggest chunk in the value chain. You may make sure with this technology that you can participate in the future in your product. I think this is common in art buying sometimes, but I've never heard this about books or music or something that you as an originator can create something, and as long as the product travels commercially to the world, you can still participate. Joanna: Let's get more specific around what an NFT is. So people know, my audience, a lot of them are independent authors, we know what a MOBI file is, or an EPUB file, or a PDF. So we know these file formats. I feel like people are confused. Is a NFT book a new format, or what does an NFT contain? John: An NFT is a carrier of something. And it has at first two ideas. It's the idea of authenticity and authorization. If you own the token, you say, ‘I am someone and I'm able to do something with it,' and that means that the connected book, or the connected artwork, or the connected cover and extra stuff is only available for you and connected with that NFT. It's the cover of the whole publishing product that's able to be done by a publisher, creator or author. Jens: Let's give some examples from other industries that make it more tangible. When you look at the U.S. market and sports, you will find a big platform that is called NBA Drop Shots. What you can do there is you can buy great scenes from NBA games, like the biggest super dunk of LeBron James in one of the playoff finals. You can buy this little piece. So now, you would say, ‘Okay, this is a movie, and everybody can put it on YouTube.' That's theoretically right, but there's only one person owning it. You can also have the Mona Lisa picture on your calendar in your home, but you probably don't own the Mona Lisa because it's in the Louvre in Paris. So this is the big difference that you really have ownership. And this token is technically making it possible to connect this ownership to you personally, not to you as a person directly, but to your wallet. And that's something maybe that needs some more explanations, but imagine it like a bank account. Everybody has a bank account. So I think in some years from now, everybody will have a wallet, where you can collect money, crypto money, and also NFTs. And these NFTs are proof that you own something, and that you may earn money with it in a licensed chain or just own it. I think talking about consumers, people will maybe just like to own things and they will not trade it every day and try to make money out of it. They will just say, ‘Oh, I got this number 10 from the limited edition of 20 books of a great author. And I own it. I have it in my wallet and maybe I show it on a platform.' Looking at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg what he's imagining of what Facebook could be in the future, I'm sure that we will be able to show our NFTs on Facebook and define and maybe give our avatar or real person some identification out there. Joanna: I'm glad you said that because I feel the same way about book NFTs, in that we are recording this on video and I've got some books behind me and we are book people. And when we go into someone's house, we look at their bookshelf because that's what we do. I feel like in the future, in a metaverse situation, we might have our NFT bookshelf behind us and it will display something about our character that we own NFTs of those books. And somehow, I know the technology might not be there right now, but the cover will be shown on the shelf. There will be apps where we can view each other's virtual bookshelf in that way. So that's kind of how I see it too. Jens: And it's already happening. Look at the gaming industry, look at what kids are doing. They are building avatars. One of the things that my daughter tried first in an educational app was she was trying out the avatar function because she was like, ‘I want to give myself in this community of little kids learning stuff some identity. I want to make sure that people somehow understand me in a different shade from others.' That's what we naturally want, don't we? To have some authenticity and some identification to make sure we are not just an army of robots, we are individuals, and we want to express ourselves. NFTs, even though they're digital and it seems unusual to say, ‘Okay, digital and identification,' but yes, I think with this token, it's going to be possible. John: Maybe one more thing on that point, to give you a sneak peek about Creatokia is when you, the user on Creatokia, or a fan, or buyer, you will have the possibility to have a social wallet, it's called My Own. And in the My Own, you can show your NFTs. And so you bind your identity and your character together with NFTs. It belongs together in a way. Joanna: To come back on what is an NFT, I think about it as a box, you said a carrier. And in that box, there can be an EPUB, there can be an image. For example, I'm going to do my hand edit, my manuscript so I'm going to have a picture that is each NFT book will contain an original picture of my hand edits, which will only be in that book. And then there might also be a video. There might be a character art there. All these things that we already use in our author world and our publishing world will go into these digital original boxes. One last question on NFT book, are we going to use different language? Because I feel like people are still discussing how to spell ebook — is it e-book? Is it Ebook?' Are we going to be talking about a N-book or an NFT book, or are we going to come up with some other language? John: It's not decided, I think. I own an NFT of this author. I think this will be the first sentence that we will use because the NFT, in itself, will be a passport to something because you can do even more. You can use the NFT for a certain chat room at Discord and you are only able to enter that chat room with the author where he answers you questions once a month or something like that. I think NFT will stand as a publication form in itself. Maybe it will get another name. But our guess is that publishers, authors, creators will release NFTs. Jens: But you're hitting a good point. You're just asking, ‘Will this stay a nerd thing forever? And will we call it NFT or something?' I don't think so. Think back a couple of years, not much more than a decade when the first smartphones came out, we all thought like, ‘Okay, this is something for nerds and you weren't going to have to write on the glass screen.' It felt really strange and odd. Today, smartphones are totally normal and we don't talk about any technology under it anymore. So I think personally that today we are still in a phase of establishing this technology and finding out what we can do as creative people with a technology. But once technology has become a commodity, and this is always happening, we will not talk about NFTs anymore. I personally think there will be new ways of saying it, like exclusive first issue, exclusive first edition, or things like that, digital original, or even more like words that we don't imagine at this point because it's not going to be a tech thing in the future. It's going to be a thing about owning something that means something to you. And it doesn't matter if it's a physical item or if it's a digital item. And it's not the token, it's just the technology behind it. That's just my guess. But it's an early stage. We don't know really, but I think this is going to disappear under the real thing. And the real thing for me is owning something that I want to have. Joanna: I like the ‘digital original' because people already say special editions and a special edition of a print book could mean a leather-bound hardback, or it could be some eco-friendly paper, or whatever. And so it contains all kinds of possibilities. Talking about language again, you used the word wallets earlier and cryptocurrency and tokens and all these words can be very confusing for people. And as you said, it's early days. Do you think people will transact on Creatokia and other platforms with fiat currency, like they'll be able to buy NFTs with U.S. dollars? Or are we looking at only using cryptocurrencies like Ether or other tokens? John: It's a very good and interesting question. On Creatokia, we decided to give hunters and gatherers for interesting book stuff, the possibility to pay in fiats or in normal currency, or in Ethereum. So this should be an easy gate to cross for the people. Another mission of Creatokia is to entertain and teach the rules of the blockchain to the people. So there are lots of pages to explain how you can make a wallet, what is a wallet, what is a cryptocurrency, and it's our mission to bring that technology into the mainstream in a way. It will take maybe some time until we reach that goal, but it is part of the deal of the whole platform. Jens: It's a central question that we've been discussing since day one. We have two groups that we address with Creatokia. I think that's not because we decided so, it's just because it's natural that the crypto community that is really a community of creators of tech nerds, like a really interesting group of people that are creating NFT projects at the moment, they are, of course, one of the first target groups. So, of course, we also address the crypto people, but the question whether it will at any point become mainstream is super crucial. We are not making Creatokia for just the crypto community, we are making it to make creative stuff from the publishing industry where we've been working in for a very long time available to everybody. And that's something that we have to develop as John said, that's why we are explaining the crypto stuff. I personally believe in five years, we won't need to explain it anymore because there will be probably Apple, Facebook, and all the big platforms managing this for you and you don't need to really take care. Whether you want to pay with Euro, Ether, you have your wallet and you just pay something and you own something and you can resell it. Let's put it this way, it's very simple. Joanna: I agree with you. I don't know if 1998 is too early, but the dotcom boom, and all the news about NFTs is “69 million for an art piece,” or “You are all ruining the environment”. It's all so hyper-inflated, and yet a decade or so later, the economy online was big. And now, it is a lot of our economy. So I agree with you. On the environmental concern, I feel like this is one of the biggest issues that we are hearing. And I feel like, again, people are stuck in the old way of blockchain a few years ago. Could you address the environmental concerns about blockchain and NFTs? John: Yes, that's something what was an issue right from the first thoughts about Creatokia when we decided in the early year 2021 that it might be the right time to do something with NFTs and book publishing. We said that we cannot start that project without thinking about environmental problems that we might cause with that. And from any business that is done on Creatokia, we will compensate the environmental problem with a partner that we chose. The partner is My Climate, and it's a certified partner for being CO. Joanna: It's a carbon offset. John: That stuff that will be compensated fully by anything that we do on Creatokia. And it's explained on the pages. Right now, you can type in creatokia.com and NFTs and environmental issues, there's a certain page for it where we explain how we do with this. Jens: And maybe some more explanation why is it the case that it is an environmental issue, it is because the blockchain is consuming so much energy at the moment, what is kind of absurd. I think this is one of the kind of, well, strange things we have to deal with. On the one hand, we have a very interesting technology that can make things possible that haven't been possible before. On the other hand, the technology itself is still an early stage. There will be changes made on the Ethereum blockchain that a lot more transactions will be possible to execute on the blockchain, and that a lot, lot, lot less energy will be needed for that, because I think nowadays nobody can really justify why we are consuming so much energy for this. I'm very confident as far as I understood. Maybe even in less than a year, Ethereum will change the technology and change the proof of stake concept, and that will change the game. I hope then the energy discussion will be a different topic then. [Here's the vision for Ethereum 2.] Joanna: Me too. I feel like it's the thing that's stopping people. There are also lots of different blockchains. I know you are building on Ethereum, which I think is one of the more stable ones. And obviously, there are lots of potentials where it could go and there are some even carbon negative blockchains, which I think are interesting. I appreciate that you are using Ethereum because I feel a bit like Amazon, old companies now that are going to be around. I feel like Ethereum's an old blockchain, so we can maybe be more confident that it will be around in the future because I guess that's the other thing I've been thinking about is, what if a new blockchain arrives that maybe we put an NFT on and then that disappears in the future? That could also be a worry for people. Jens: Yes, absolutely. I think Ethereum won't go away. That was one of the reasons why we decided. But also, I would say that we are blockchain agnostic in a way. So if there is a better way to execute what we want to do, why not change? For the moment, the Ethereum blockchain is very stable, it's established, and it comes with a lot of opportunities to create these smart contracts in a way that we want to do it. If there's another possibility in the future, certainly we would go for the best way, and, of course, make sure that people can keep their stuff. And the point you mentioned is a very important point. It's about trust. It's about trust that these transactions that you're making that will have a meaning in the future and not just go away. And I think that's something that we have to take care of. John: It's a decentralization thing because Ethereum is so open, you will be able to trade books that you sourced on Creatokia on OpenSea and stuff. And it would somehow jeopardize the whole blockchain thing when you build another world garden. That's not the idea. The idea of Creatokia is to build a gateway for authors, creators, and collectors, and publishers And, of course, we will offset 100% the carbon footprint that we do now. We can really guarantee that. Joanna: I have an interesting question about intellectual property rights, which, of course, underpin the whole publishing industry. As an independent author, I own and control my rights. So I can jump on the first NFT potential option, but many authors signed a contract or an addendum years ago and signed contracts that might include ‘digital rights,' or ‘e-book rights,' or ‘digital audio.' There are these phrases in most people's contracts now that I think would stop authors being able to do their own NFTs, because essentially, it is a digital format. What do you think about digital IP rights? Will we see a split in contracts into special edition digital rights? How will authors manage if publishers don't want to do NFTs? What do you see coming in that area? Jens: Generally there are lots of different aspects here and contracts and different types of relationships between authors, agents, and publishers. I personally think the world is a free world. So, today, you can really decide as an author. If you want to go yourself as a self-publisher, you can do that, you can be perfectly well-successful. If you decide to ‘marry' a publisher in a way and go into a strong partnership, then I would think … I'm not a lawyer from my perspective. Now, I would say, ‘This might be included in what you've probably signed, and you should, in good faith and in a good partnership, discuss with your publisher whether you think this is right for your career, for your products, or not.' So I wouldn't say there's a general answer to that point. Legally, I would tend to follow your opinion saying, ‘This might be included in some contracts, but again, this is something new.' So the rules are not 100% applicable, the rules from the past to this now. My guess would be let's not get stuck in legal stuff. Our approach is really to find people who believe in this and make great stuff with those. And who don't believe, that's okay. You don't need to do this. It's a free world. I wouldn't say that you necessarily lose the game or your reputation or whatever if you don't do it at the very beginning. There will be, that's what I know for sure. And that what we've seen talking to a lot of publishers and agents and publishers and authors. There are a lot of people who are interested. And I think we focus on those and the legal side will be sorted out easily, I think, from our perspective. Joanna: Great. Well, that is good to hear. I like to say it because, of course, a lot of authors listening take part in rights negotiation and contracts. I want people to start bringing this up because, of course, a lot of people sign contracts, some people for the life of copyright. You are making decisions potentially that could affect your future earnings, even down to the percentage split of resale, which I presume currently is not in digital contracts, right? So I do think there's a lot of stuff that will need to be worked out. You mentioned focusing on the people who believe, and I'm one of those, to be sure. For people listening who are now enthusiastic, what is the timeline for Creatokia? When can we start NFTs? John: We now have our first drop in November. It's called the Creatoken. And that's for the first believers. The landing page is already there. Maybe you want to implement the link in the show notes of this podcast. And of course, if you go on creatokia.com, you will see that Creatoken. It's the key to Creatokia. For the first believers, this key opens the door to the platform that will go live by winter, autumn this year. You will get a free drop if you'll go with that token so you understand how Creatokia functions. And that's the best answer to your question that I can give today. Jens: And you can read from that that John is a storytelling guy, a storytelling person. He loves stories. And he's got stuck in doing business with me in our core business in Bookwire. That's why he's now thinking about stories for Creatokia. And of course, I'm kidding a little bit, but you can see that storytelling is a big aspect here. It's not only about creating a platform. And the first story we tell ourselves, if you go to the website, you will see that there is an idea behind this. It's not just technology. We say, ‘You can do something here. Come on, start.' It's really about making the first move ourselves with a story. And so there will be a mix of projects going live on Creatokia, where with this key to Creatokia, you may have some advantages, for example, and there will be publisher-centric drops that focus more on the author of a certain book, more like classic creative stuff from authors. So there will be all kinds of things. But what is really important is that it should be fun, it should be entertaining, it should be creative, and it should be really an experience for people to do that. It's not just another channel to sell something to make money or whatever. Of course, it's about making money because people want to make a living from what they do. But it's really about storytelling. That's for us as a company. It's also exciting because we are managing so much digital business of so many publishers around the world. That is great and that will not go away. That will stay very important for us. But entering this new business with a story that people have really fun and feel entertained and have an experience, that's the motivation for us to do it. Joanna: Me too. I kind of feel like if this is going to be all normalized in the next 5 to 10 years, I want to be involved as I was with e-books, like you guys very early on and digital audio and AI audio and all these different things. Coming back to the practicality. Say I'm in, I've got my Creatoken, I go on there, I want to do my NFT. So I can put in an EPUB and an image and a video into my first NFT. And of course, this is the problem right now I see OpenSea. They don't allow an EPUB or any kind of digital e-book format, they allow video images, etc. You mentioned you could be reselling it on OpenSea, for example. Is the format going to include all of those things on Creatokia that makes it different to the other places? John: Yes, that makes it different. So you are able with the Creatokia token to access the extras that you mentioned only with the Creatokia token. On Creatokia, you are able to get your stuff to your, let's say, safe wallet of all that you bought with the NFT. The technology will be, of course, developed more and more, and maybe it will stick even closer together. But the token itself is the binding element to the author content that you created. And of course, the possibilities that you will have on Creatokia is how you offer your NFT books. So it can be a limited edition, it can be a one-off digital original, it can be a timed sale. Maybe you are J. K. Rowling, and you decide to make the eighth episode of Harry Potter, and you do a center stage video stream and you sell a limited edition only for an hour at midnight a week before the release of the book. This is what you can do in Creatokia. And maybe if you are the token buyer, you are the only one who is able to print the book for you and your friends. Imagine that there are only 100 tokens of a book and the token owners only able to print it. That's interesting out of my perspective. The creative things should be limitless, but we cannot code as fast as we can think, as our ideas arise in our minds on what we can do. So it's really a limitless story. It's an odyssey. Joanna: Then the question comes from the reader perspective. I know how excited I am as an author and a creator, but I'm also a reader, and the people who are going to buy these things are readers. I feel that by launching now and by getting on there, it might then be tumbleweed in terms of no one comes to buy anything because no one knows about this stuff, or it's very hard to educate people at the moment into how this all works. Are you expecting readers to come to Creatokia? Is it going to be a marketplace for readers and NFT buyers like OpenSea? Or will I have links on my author website and drive people to get the NFT? What's the experience for the reader? John: It's both. If you are a reader, you go to Creatokia to find that special stuff, or even to get into contact with your favorite author. And on the other side, it's the connection opposite. It's the author who decides to use Creatokia to mint books to outline what his creativity is about in the way he uses NFT technology. It's bringing people together. And then it's only a gateway. It's a gateway to the wide, wide world out there. When you bought the NFT, you are able to resell it, you're able to use it, any stuff like that. It's for both. It should bring people together. That's what the blockchain technology is about. Jens: But maybe technically speaking, at least today, I would say that in the future, this cannot be different, but today, Creatokia will not be an ecosystem for consumption of all kinds of assets because you are consuming books in your preferred ecosystem, whether it's Kindle, Kobo, or you're reading on whatever device, on your mobile phone. The asset that is connected to the token, that asset that comes with that token, that is not necessarily, like it's in an asset repository, so it can be accessed from anywhere and that you can use it in your ecosystem, in your preferred ecosystem. When we talk about an EPUB, for example, there will not be an EPUB ecosystem on Creatokia. You will be able to preview it. But of course, if you want to download your special version of your book, you will download it and consume it in your own ecosystem. Joanna: Okay, so you might download the EPUB and send it to your device as you would normally if you buy that kind of thing. And many of us use a company like BookFunnel, for example, that's what I use, which will send it to whichever device somebody is listening to, or reading on because that becomes the thing. It's like, ‘Well, how do I read my NFT?' We all also have to include instructions at the beginning, at least, so that people know, ‘All right, this is the journey as the customer.' I've been on Creatokia a lot over the last couple of weeks and I see you've been building out the website. For people listening, you've got a podcast that's currently in German. Obviously, my audience are mainly English-speaking. Where can people learn more? And tell us about the podcast because I think there are some changes coming. Jens: We have received so many requests as to why we are doing the podcast in German. That's actually because John talked me into this and said, ‘Come on.' Because he has done several podcasts, he said like, ‘Come on, let's do this podcast in German together as a warmup and a kickoff because it needs so much explanation, and you can't just write it everywhere. People won't read it. It's too complex. Let's just tell stories and have great guests and explain our audience and our industry how this functions.' And so we have decided to now switch into English. So, actually, you are now the first English podcast that we are doing this episode with you. And we will switch the ‘Creatokia Podcast‘ to English. And we will have our hosts, our Videl Bar-Kar, he's the Head of Audio in Bookwire. And he will help us because he's really fluent. He's native, of course. He's a British man. And so he will help us into this and we will continue the ‘Creatokia Podcast' in English for probably another 10 episodes. People will be able to follow us there and we will catch up a little bit on things that we've discussed in the German version, but, of course, keep people updated about what's coming up in Creatokia because that's certainly not a German project. It was just that we both started this podcast in German to experiment a little bit with the two of us doing a podcast together. John: From episode 11 on, it will be two German dudes and an Englishman discussing blockchain stuff for publishers, authors, and creators. And of course, you can address that podcast on any podcast platform you want. It's called the ‘Creatokia Podcast.' Another very important thing of the Creatokia community that we want to build is our Discord server. So when you use Discord, it's possible to get in direct contact with the Creatokia team there, and lots of stuff will happen there, and, of course, creatokia.com where you can address all our social media profiles, well, 21st century stuff. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, both of you. And your company motto is, ‘The best is yet to come', and I'm with you on that. So exciting times ahead. Thank you for your time. John: Thank you very much for inviting us, Joanna. Thank you very much. Jens: Thank you. It was a pleasure. My thoughts after the interview I hope you enjoyed the interview with Jens and John —and I am positive about Creatokia in part because of who they are. They co-founded Bookwire, a German company that is already part of the publishing ecosystem, providing digital solutions for ebooks and audio. They are embedded in the publishing industry. They know the players, they have the relationships, and they have a proven track record of delivering technical solutions. In fact, I have reported on their online events and talks at London and Frankfurt Book Fairs over the years. They already have the trust of the publishing industry so they are well positioned to make this work.  Here are my thoughts on some key points from the interview. We currently have a problem with digital. In a time of limitless supply in the digital world, NFTs allow digital scarcity — and scarcity makes something valuable.  A few years ago, as the subscription model really began taking off for ebooks and digital audiobooks, I could see the decline of our current business model in the years ahead and it worried me. If digital is limitless, then the value of digital tends towards zero. You can see this in the music industry, with musicians being paid a pittance per Spotify stream and we are heading that way with ebooks and digital audio with the unlimited subscription models. It is inevitable, because it’s great for consumers. But this change in business models is also inevitable. As the old begins to fade, new opportunities arise. I recently read Undisruptible, A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organizations and Life, by Aidan McCullen, which explains how this works and how we need to embrace the change. It talks about the series of S-curves that we go through at different points in our lives, individually, as a company and as a society.  There is growth and then there is change, and if you don’t adapt to the new thing, there is decline. McCullen gives the example of Kodak, Blackberry, and Nokia, companies that dominated and then lost almost all market share as digital technology changed the game. He says, “We become so preoccupied with optimising, enjoying and defending the competitive advantage that made us successful today that we neglect to prepare for tomorrow.”  He also talks about the different stages of a business model. Phase five is the final one: “They compete on marketing spend rather than product innovation. They compete on price rather than demand. They facilitate price cuts through job automation, optimisation and ‘me-too’ propositions, where their products become generic.”  This sounds very much like the digital publishing space right now, and the pandemic has driven traditional publishing into the online marketing space, too, so the business model will be squeezed even more.  As a customer, I love Netflix and Spotify and Amazon Prime. As a reader and listener, I am in Kindle Unlimited and Audible, which is basically now unlimited. But I also support creators on Patreon and buy special editions and buy books direct — and that’s the model we need to embrace. It's hard to make a living in the unlimited digital model. We need to embrace digital scarcity and resale of digital assets, as well as the possibilities of smart contracts on blockchain. Musicians have started to embrace NFTs with enthusiasm and many of them are doing NFT drops for digital originals and are now making decent money again. It’s the beginning of a new business model build on blockchain and fuelled by NFTs. In fact, if you are a music fan, then keep your ears open for drops by your favourite musicians as you can then understand this from a customer perspective. What is an NFT book in practical terms? Is it a mobi or ePub file?  John described an NFT as a ‘carrier,’ and I talked about it as like a ‘digital box.’ You can put what you like in the box (dependent on the platform). It could be an ePub file for an ebook or an MP3 file for audio, or a video, or a ticket to an event, or it might allow access to a community. Plus, many other things we haven’t thought of yet. You can find some examples of authors doing NFTs on this article on the ALLi blog where Laurence O’Bryan from BooksGoSocial talks about various book NFT projects on the Wax blockchain, which is carbon neutral. I am intending to do an NFT ‘drop’ in the coming months — which means I will release several NFT originals of Tomb of Relics. I will generate individual ePub files, where each one will include a numbered image of a page of my hand edits. [You can do this with Vellum or any of the other formatting options.]  I’ll also include a video clip of me writing, so you will see the words appear on the screen and you can watch my face as I type. Yes, it’s a bit weird! But it’s the first time I have used Sudowrite, the AI tool built on GPT-3, as part of my creative process, so it truly is a digital original. It marks a specific point in my journey as a creator and a specific point in the evolution of writers working with AI tools. [For more on Sudowrite, see episode 558: Writing Fiction with AI, an interview with Amit Gupta.]  It all sounds a bit technical, but as Jens said, ‘Will this remain a nerd thing forever?’ No, it won’t!  Ebooks were super nerdy in 2008 when I started self-publishing and now they are entirely mainstream. New indie authors coming into this space might be confused about the terminology we use, but after a book or two, it becomes second nature. NFTs and blockchain will be the same way. And of course, Creatokia intends to educate authors and the publishing community, as well as readers and digital collectors about how this all works. I hope you will check out their podcast when it switches into English in the coming weeks. Head over to creatokia.com and read their help pages for more info and subscribe to the podcast. Is the author and reader community ready? What about the failure of YA NFT project, Realms of Ruin?  A few weeks ago, six YA authors announced the upcoming launch of Realms of Ruin, a collaborative fantasy epic filled with dark magic, intrigue, and unique characters — as reported by TechCrunch. The authors intended to post 12 initial origin stories about their fictional universe, to which they owned the copyright. The fans could then write their own stories, and mint them as NFTs on the Solana blockchain. But the authors were ripped apart on social media. The community just didn’t get it, so the authors decided to pull the project. I saw some of the tweets and articles about it, and basically, people just did not understand the concept. They saw authors trying to rip off fans in some kind of Ponzi scheme, while simultaneously destroying the environment. I even saw some tweets from an agent who lamented ever having to deal with NFT licensing — which is very short-sighted given the potential of resale. I think these YA authors were probably a year too early with their project — and I really hope they try again once the community is more educated about blockchain and NFTs. Realms of Ruin sounds similar to what Jessica Artemisia talked about in our interview on episode 581, so it’s really a new type of business model.  I believe the authors want the best for their community and they could see the potential for the writers of fanfic to finally make money within their world, a bit like Kindle Worlds did and how some authors now create collaborative worlds and allow co-writers inside. The YA authors also chose the Solana blockchain as it is one of the more environmentally friendly blockchains.  But they were just too early. Clearly, as I write this in early November 2021, the author and reader community is not ready for NFTs. It is quite likely that I will mint my own NFTs with Creatokia in the coming months and no one will buy them — or maybe someone who believes that I am in this for the long-term will take a chance on me. Perhaps the value of my digital original assets will go up over time and whoever joins me at the beginning of this new adventure will make a good investment — or at least have a digital collectible on their virtual shelf! But regardless of initial success, I’ve been doing this long enough now to understand the feeling I get when the penny drops and I see the future of how something will work. “I would like to see the opening of the Amazon Kindle Publishing platform to non-US authors.” Joanna Penn, Oct, 2009. On 26 October 2009, 12 years ago, I reviewed the international Kindle on YouTube. My excitement as an author and as a reader is obvious as I talk about how brilliant it is.  “Hi, I'm Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn and today I just want to share with you my excitement about the international Kindle, which I've just got. It arrived on Saturday and I've been reading books on it and it's just absolutely fantastic.  I wanted to tell you a bit about it and why I'm so enthusiastic, I guess, because for Americans, you've had the Kindle for a couple of years now, but for the rest of the world, this is basically the first time I've even seen the Kindle, let alone held it and used it for reading. It's just beautiful. I really love it. I’m also thrilled because my own books are on the Kindle, which I publish through a friend in America. So one improvement I would like to see is the opening of the Amazon Kindle Publishing platform to non-US authors. So that would be a real improvement, but generally, I think it's fantastic. People criticize it for being just black and white and being just really for books. I mean, it's not multimedia, it's not multicolored, but most books are black and white and it's just very relaxing and lovely to use. So I highly recommend the international Kindle from Amazon. It’s just a brilliant tool.”  How times have changed! Amazon did open up KDP to international authors and then Apple, Kobo and other platforms emerged. I left my job two years later in Sept 2011, and I’ve built a multi-six figure business off the back of digital publishing. I sensed change was coming because of that device and the new ebook format, and I feel that excitement again now. “A golden period for creative people.” Chris Dixon on the Tim Ferriss Podcast, Oct 2021 I’ve been listening to a lot of podcast episodes on NFTs and I recommend episode 542 of the Tim Ferriss Podcast with Naval Ravikant and Chris Dixon that went out on Oct 28, 2021. Tim talks about a visceral excitement that wakes him up at 3 am, thinking about what could be possible with NFTs and blockchain, which is exactly how I feel. I’m actually writing these notes before 4 am as I wake up in the early hours thinking about it too. It’s an excellent episode and they talk about how these changes might impact creators, authors, and artists in terms of a business model for the future. Here’s a short clip where Chris Dixon explains his vision. It’s at around 2 hours and 15 mins, near the end of the interview, and it is well worth listening to the whole thing. They refer to generative art and music but the same applies for authors or any other kind of creators. “I think that's one of the cool things here is when you create a better business model for art, let's say, or for music. Step one will be you take the existing artists and they get more money. Step two is you're going to incentivize a whole new generation to go do these cool things with a generative art. Now you have a way to make money on it. And so there's just going to be all these smart people attracted to creative things. But I think it's a great thing. I think we were just dramatically underpaying creative people in my view, and we've now figured out a way to pay them properly. And that's going to lead to a huge new wave of creative activities, and not just paying existing musicians. Maybe we enter a world where there's instead of 8 million musicians on Spotify, there’s a billion. Maybe there's a billion musicians. There's a billion artists. There's millions of generative artists. I think this is the right kind of evolution of the internet. This should be a golden period for creative people. There are 8 billion people and 6 billion or whatever are internet connected. And you only need a thousand to make a living. This should be the greatest time in history for creative people. And I think we might've finally figured it out.” As Jens from Creatokia said in the interview, “In 5 years, we won’t have to explain this anymore.” The technology will just be part of your life. You don’t need to know how to code an ePub file to sell an ebook online. You don’t need to know how podcasting works technically to listen to this. You don’t need to know how internet works to receive money into your PayPal account and download it to your bank account. It will be the same for blockchain and NFTs and wallets. In Undisruptible, Aidan McCullen quotes a Chinese proverb, “When the wind of change blows, some build walls, while others build windmills.” Creatokia is a windmill, an attempt to harness the technological change ahead with blockchain and NFTs. I am excited to jump on Creatokia when it launches, which hopefully will be in the next few months, and of course, there will be many more possibilities emerging. Remember what I said in that video from October 2009, basically suggesting that Amazon open up to international authors! How things have changed since then.  As ever, you don’t have to do anything right now. I’m usually a few years early on these things, so you’ve got time to watch what happens before you take action. All I ask is that you stay curious and open to what might unfold. In the meantime, keep writing, keep creating intellectual property assets and don’t sign contracts that might stop you from taking advantage of these technologies. Exciting times ahead, creatives! I hope you’ll continue to join me on the journey.  Thanks to my patrons whose support of the podcast give me the extra time needed to research and do these extra interviews. If you found this useful, you can support the show at patreon.com/thecreativepenn and you’ll get the extra monthly Q&A audio session as well as money off my ebooks, audiobooks and courses, or you can buy me a coffee to fuel my early morning excitement at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thecreativepenn  Back to the usual format on Monday, when I’m talking about something many of us want to achieve: From Book To Netflix Show With Chrissy Metge, all about which projects are worth pitching and how the process works. So happy writing, and I’ll see you next time.The post Creatokia. The World Of Digital Originals (NFTs) With Jens Klingelhöfer and John Ruhrmann first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can we balance creative passion projects with work that brings in an income? What are the different types of poetry and how can we bring them alive through the spoken word? Mark McGuinness talks about how poetry is at the center of his universe, fueling his creativity as well as informing his coaching business. In the intro, Facebook rebrands as Meta [Facebook]; The metaverse for authors and publishing; Is the metaverse already here? [Unchained]; You Are a Writer, You Create and License Intellectual Property Assets; IP is the new frontlist [Kris Rusch]. Plus, Books2Read now has print links; How to Write for Markets That Sell webinar [K-lytics]; and the NaNoWriMo Storybundle for Writers. Mark McGuinness is an award-winning poet, non-fiction author, and creative coach. He's also the host of two podcasts, The 21st Century Creative, and his new poetry show, A Mouthful of Air. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How poetry is the center of Mark's creative and business lifeBalancing art and commerceWhy launch a poetry podcast?Different approaches to poetryIntellectual property issues with poetryEgo and validationFunding a podcast You can find Mark McGuinness at AMouthfulOfAir.fm and on Twitter @amouthfulofair Transcript of Interview with Mark McGuinness Joanna: Mark McGuinness is an award-winning poet, non-fiction author, and creative coach. He's also the host of two podcasts, ‘The 21st Century Creative' and his new poetry show ‘A Mouthful of Air.' Welcome back to the show, Mark. Mark: Thank you, Jo. It's always nice to be here. Joanna: Indeed. You've been on the show a number of times, so we're not going to get into all of that. Today we're focusing on your poetry, which is exciting. I wanted to start by asking about the integration. You've been running a successful creative business for many years. What part does poetry play in your life in terms of creativity, and does it play any part in the business side? Mark: For me personally, poetry is the bedrock. It's the foundation of who I am in everything that I do. In terms of writing, it's the most fulfilling kind of writing that I read and also to write. There's nothing else that comes close really. All my writing about creativity, my work as a coach, they're really side effects of the poetry. And that's not to diminish them because I absolutely love doing them and I love the fact that I get to do lots of different things, a bit like you. But really, poetry is at the center of my universe. If there was no poetry, there wouldn't really be much point to the rest of it. So, they really go hand in hand in that way. Creatively though, I think of poetry as completely separate from everything else I do. I love the fact that it's a different world and I can do what the hell I like there. There are no commercial considerations, there's no money at stake. I don't think that's any great secret about the poetry world. So, I have a lot more freedom than a writer who has to keep an eye on the market, their business is maybe based on selling a certain volume or something like a movie studio where there's a committee making decisions in a very risk-averse basis. With poetry, I can basically do what I want. I think the only thing I would say about the poetry and the business, having a relationship, is that it does inform the kind of coach that I am. Because I'm a poet, I've got a very strong affinity with creatives of all kinds. And that's who I like to work with, that's my tribe. On the other hand, I hear from a lot of my clients who say, well, the fact that I'm a poet was attractive to them when they were looking for a coach. They knew they weren't going to get the usual corporate-style coaching or even necessarily mainstream life coaching. I've never thought of myself in those terms. They like the idea of working with a fellow creative because they know we'll have certain values in common. Joanna: It's so interesting. You said at the beginning there that, ‘Poetry is at the foundation of who I am,' which is pretty hardcore. I've read all your non-fiction. I knew you before you knew who I was back in the day, over a decade ago, because you were I think about five years ahead of me and I bought one of your courses early on. I've read pretty much all your stuff. You do share a lot of personal stuff in your non-fiction books, in your blog, in your podcast. And yet, you're basically saying that your poetry is the far more personal side, the more fulfilling side. So, to me, this is really difficult and I think about writing a memoir and something I'm kind of struggling with. Do you think that your poetry is your more vulnerable side? Are you more vulnerable to criticism? And you've written a book on criticism. How do we find the strength to tap into these more personal sides of writing and put ourselves out there in this very vulnerable way? Mark: Why do you think I wrote a book on criticism?! I don't know. It was partly me and partly what I was hearing from clients and readers. But yeah, in terms of vulnerability, absolutely. I do write some poems with personal subject matter, but I'm not what's called a confessional poet, you're not going to get all my dirty secrets. But even when I'm writing something that's ostensibly about another subject, of course, in the world of poetry, everything's metaphorical. So, it's always personal on that level. I remember when I started doing poetry readings, I had already come quite a long way out of my introverted shell. I'd forced and trained and cajoled and got myself coached to do a lot of public speaking, for instance, as a psychotherapist and then, later on, as a coach. I was really proud of the fact that I'd overcome my fears to the point where I could speak at an international conference. I even ended up teaching presentation skills, I had a whole course around this. And, so, I remember thinking, ‘Okay, I've got this,' when I was asked to start giving poetry readings. And I was actually quite annoyed to discover that there was this whole new level of fear involved in reading my poems to an audience. It was like there were several more layers stripped off me and I was really exposed on a personal emotional level in a way that didn't happen with normal public speaking. So, in terms of how we deal with it, well, my way of getting over it, as usual, is to find the best teacher or coach that I could find and persuade them to let me work with them. I went up to the Orkney Islands off the north of Scotland and I worked with Kristin Linklater who sadly, she's no longer with us, but she was a legend in acting and voice teaching circles. She had a specialism in speaking Shakespearean verse and helping actors on the stage to do the iambic pentameter with the big soliloquies and so on with feeling. And, so, I said, ‘I'm a poet. Can I come on the course?' and she said, ‘Yes, you're allowed. You can bring your own poetry.' In total, I spent two weeks up there, two separate occasions. And the first week was the foundation and the second week I got to do the Shakespeare course. And she really put me through the ringer. There's a story I tell on ‘A Mouthful of Air' about the day that she lost patience with me because I wasn't projecting enough. We all had to read a sonnet, a Shakespearean sonnet, as part of our training. And she kept saying, ‘Mark, we're over here. You need to reach us.' And, eventually, she said, ‘Look, this isn't working.' And she opened the door and she said, ‘Right, let's all go outside.' We go outside on this hillside, like a small mountain on this island in the middle of the North Sea, and she says, ‘Mark, you are going to the top of the hill and we are going to the bottom of the hill. And you are going to speak your poem in such a way that we hear it and we feel it at the bottom.' And, of course, I was absolutely terrified. But if Kristin told you what to do, you did it. I staggered about at the top of the hill, feeling completely ridiculous. And in the end, there was a part of me that just let go, and this big voice came out and, suddenly, I was booming it out all the way across the sea and over to the other island. And the way I thought, it was a bit like a Shakespearean version of ‘The Sound of Music'. I went down the bottom of the hill after that, and there were one or two people who actually there were tears in their eyes. So, it had connected. And after that, I really don't care as much. I found myself in readings where I realized I'm the loudest poet in the room. Because something Kristin did, it just unlocked the voice and it wants to come out. Joanna: That's so interesting. And that's definitely a good tip for people because I've had plenty of professional speaking training and I can, same as you, speak on big stages. There's always a little bit of nerves but it's fine. And yet, I still haven't read my fiction work in front of a group. I will always resist that because it's so much more personal, it's so much more scary. And it's almost like that experience helped you break through that. So a tip for people listening, don't just go on a a public speaking course, you actually need to do something that is with work that means something. I think that's super useful. I do want to come back, you said you're not a confessional poet. A lot of people might not realize that there's such a breadth. If people are not in the poetry community or have only read some poetry or maybe studied some at school, what are the different types of poets out there? Mark: It's a broad church. The confessional poets started in the '60s with people like Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath who were basically putting out their family history, stuff that wouldn't have normally got talked about, personal history, particularly with them around mental health. It's all about ‘bearing my soul and just letting everything out' kind of thing. Some poets will still do that now but others like to take maybe a more oblique approach. So, that's one school. Another way you might classify a poet is by the style of the writing. Personally, I write in quite a lot of traditional forms. I wouldn't call myself this but some people would label that ‘formalist poetry.' It sounds a little bit like formal dress though to me. I don't think any writer particularly likes to say, ‘I'm this kind of writer,' because we all like to think we're unique and special, don't we? Joanna: But you use particular structures. Mark: I do. I do all the Shakespearean sonnet and the iambic pentameter. And I love all the old forms, like the medieval ones, the renaissance ones. They're magical structures, there's almost like an incantatory quality to them. I think it's a shame that we're in danger of losing that as part of the mainstream of poetry. I think, recent years, it's coming back, it comes back in waves, so to speak. But certainly, that's my default form of writing. Whereas I think a lot of poets, their default these days would be to write in free verse. So, it doesn't have meter, it doesn't necessarily have rhyme, although it can do. It wouldn't have more of a set structure but, of course, its own kind of discipline. T. S. Eliot famously said that there's not really any such thing as free verse because there are always constraints in art. But if anybody's listening and you're not plugged into the contemporary poetry scene, just because you read one type of poem and you think, ‘Oh, I'm not sure I like that,' there's an awful lot to choose from just like fiction. Don't let any one experience put you off. Joanna: Yes, I think that's really important. I've written a pantoum and other forms like this, and the boundaries can actually help us be more creative. Some people might have tried a haiku, which looks simple but it's not. I guess ‘basic' is one word for it, but you have to think about so many things and you have fewer words than you do for a book. So, it's a very different art, which is interesting. Let's talk about the poetry podcast, ‘A Mouthful of Air.' You've got this successful show, ‘The 21st Century Creative,' which is very tied into your business side. I've been on it, you've had some really big-name people on, it's a great show, highly recommend it to people. And we both know how hard it is to do a podcast. Why launch a poetry podcast, and what is it that the spoken word brings for this? Mark: It really began very simply with just the urge to share some poems. I was looking at my bookshelves, which, if we were doing this on video, you would be able to see, there's shelves and shelves of poetry behind me. And I started to think, ‘It's a shame if the circle stops with me, it's just me who reads and enjoys,' because I've got so many hours of pleasure and sustenance from those. Most people don't read poetry. And I got to thinking, ‘Surely, it can't be that hard to invite them in and take a book down from the shelf and read it and say, ‘Look, isn't this great?' and show them what I love about those poems?' And, so, that's a lot of, obviously, famous poets of the past, but also I know quite a few contemporary poets who write the most amazing things. I used to go to classes at the Poetry School in London and the City Lit and, apart from anything, I was learning. Everyone would read a poem and we would critique it. I would just think it was the most fabulous evening of entertainment. I would be getting a live performance from about six poets one evening and it would be really really high-quality and really varied, picking up on what you were saying. So, I just thought that this should be more widely known. Wouldn't it be great to put these poems on a podcast so that other people can enjoy the way I do? The more I thought about this, the idea of a poetry podcast, the more I kept going back to the idea that poetry, at its roots, really is an oral art. It's older than writing. It would be the tribe around the campfire listening to the voice of the poet, or the shaman, or the bard, or whatever they were called, and they would be telling stories in song, in verse, in maybe a mixture of the two, and there would be epic tales. There would be tales about the gods and heroes and the creation of the world and love and betrayal and so on. And that was really how we made sense of our world. A lot of the time the poet would be the memory database of the tribe in terms of history, and mythology, and religion, and then sometimes even stuff like botany, and the medicine, and whatever. And modern poetry, we don't look to the poet for an understanding of life, the universe, and everything these days in the way that maybe we did once upon a time but poetry is still there as an oral art, and reading a poem, listening to a poem spoken. One of the other things I've discovered about podcasts, and I know you've seen this too, it's a really privileged medium because people tend to listen to podcasts in the quiet time of their day, in their me time when they're cleaning up, when they're commuting, when they're going for a walk. It struck me that this is a chance to have the poet's voice in your ear, in that quiet time of the day, and it's not going to give you the whole cosmology and meaning of the universe but Robert Frost put it beautifully when he said, ‘A poem can give you a momentary stay against confusion.' A moment of clarity, of…not quite certainty or reassurance but maybe of being earthed or connected to something that feels true, that feels real and authentic. That's the potential of a podcast is really simply to have the poet's voice in your ear doing that and maybe helping you make a bit more sense of your world. Joanna: I think now there are a lot of performance poets as well and even you could say into the rap movement, and song lyrics. People know these by heart, the songs by heart because they are essentially poetry, and a lot of them rhyme. I know not all poetry has to rhyme, but rhyming poetry in song is a way that it was the message was carried, wasn't it, as well? Mark: Absolutely. I think of poetry in some ways very much like music. And I would say to anybody who doesn't feel confident as a poetry reader, think about it like this. So, for instance, I can't read music, I can't play an instrument, I can't sing in tune but I have strong opinions and tastes in music. And I have a brother who is a musician and was a professional musician and he can explain all the technical stuff and his knowledge of music is much deeper than I am, but sometimes if we have a discussion about music, I'll say, ‘Yeah, but I just don't like it. I like this instead.' I think I would really encourage you, if you try the podcast, to use it as a way of starting to develop your own taste in poetry. It's not an academic discipline, they try to turn it into one but that's not what it is. The way I do this on the podcast is I throw you in at the deep end but then I also throw you a life jacket. Joanna: What do you mean by that? Mark: The way this works is, you hear the opening music but then the next thing after that you will hear is the poet reading a poem. If it's a living poet, I get them to come and read it. If it's a dead poet, I'll read it on their behalf. But so often we feel, ‘Oh, you need to have it explained to you first and get the CliffsNotes into the footnotes,' and whatever. No, you don't. If it's a good poem, it doesn't need an introduction and it should have an effect, even if you don't grasp the whole meaning of it all at once. And treat it like music. Does it make you feel something? Does it create images in your mind or emotions? Do you feel it in your gut? That's throwing you in the deep end. You just hear the poem, whatever it is. But then the life jacket I'm going to throw you is you'll get a bit of context about the poems straight after it. If it's a classic poem, then you'll hear me effusing about the poem and talking about the background and what we know about the poet. And also some technical stuff about, ‘Look what they're doing here. Look how this is made, how it works.' And you will get the technical stuff, but again, it's not academic. I'm going to show you how a poet…and the old word for a poet is…well, in Greek, ‘poet' means maker. So, this is really a craft, practical ‘how's this put together?' approach. If it's a living poet who's on the show, then I will interview them for about 10, 20, 25 minutes about the poem, where it came from, that's usually the question I start with, and then how it evolved in the writing process. So, you've got the poem, you've got your initial response to it, your own experience of it, and then you get a bit of perspective or background about it that maybe helps to shed some light on aspects that weren't immediately apparent. And then, at the end of the show, this is my favorite bit, we play the same recording of the poem again. And even though it's the same recording of the same poem, people tell me, ‘It sounds different the second time round,' because, of course, they've got that bit of context and there're some things that they're listening out for that they're going to notice because we've highlighted them in the interview or the commentary. So, that's the deep end and life jacket approach to poetry. Joanna: I think that's so interesting. I love that you're delving deeper into the craft side. And your enthusiasm for poetry, I think, is infectious. So, basically, if listeners don't know anything about poetry, they'll get something out of it. And then, as with poems, if they already know things, they're going to get a deeper level of meaning in these poems. Mark: That's right. I've got two ideal listeners in mind. One is a poetry geek like me who lives and breathes this stuff and wants to experience it in a different way. And then the other is the person who's cultured, reads a lot, but reads probably anything but poetry, and giving them a way into it. The other things I try and do, particularly around the questions with the poets, is if you ever read a poem and your first response is, ‘What? Hang on a minute, I don't get it,' or, ‘Does it mean…?' whatever, I try and ask all of those questions to the poet. So, if you've ever had that response to a poem, then tune in to ‘A Mouthful of Air' and you're going to hear me grilling the poet and saying, ‘Come on, what are we supposed to get from this?' or, ‘Am I being dumb?' or whatever. So, it's just opening it up and not being so precious about it. Joanna: Not being precious about poetry is actually really important I think. We all get so het up, so serious about all this stuff I think probably because so many of us did it at school. I did poetry at school and it was very serious and very important. Mark: That's right. I got a lovely email from a reader the other day who said, ‘I used to run screaming from poetry but now you've opened the door and you've shown me it can relate to me.' I think a nice example of this is I have my longtime teacher and mentor, Mimi Khalvati, a really wonderful poet, and she's just published a lovely book of Petrarchan sonnets called ‘Afterwardness.' And, of course, when you hear the word ‘Petrarchan sonnet,' you think, ‘my goodness me, that's going to be elevated and on a pedestal and a bit remote,' but the poem that she read is called ‘Eggs.' When I asked, ‘From where did you get the inspiration for it?' she said, ‘Well, I ordered a fried egg in my local cafe.' And it's about an egg. She's got this wonderful theory about how eggs are like Petrarchan sonnets. You'll have to listen to the episode to untangle that. But, hopefully, that gives an idea of the down-to-earth aspect of it, even with something as revered as such an old verse form. Joanna: The other thing I think is really interesting is intellectual property. I think this is super important to talk about because you mentioned living poets and dead poets. So, in terms of the intellectual property of being able to read a poem in audio format…because this is one of the issues. A lot of people want to quote poetry in their work or song lyrics, and you can't usually because they're so short, it can't possibly come under fair use. How are you dealing with the intellectual property side of the show? Mark: I am doing my best to be scrupulous about it. What that means is old poets does mean old poets, so it's stuff that's out of copyright. Shakespeare's not going to sue me for using his sonnet. Chaucer is probably not going to get too annoyed if I do a bit of one of his poems. For the contemporary poets, I'm checking with each poet, who is the license holder or who needs to sign off? Often it's the publisher. And we're getting the publisher to sign off and say, ‘Yes, we're happy.' I'm pleased to say that publishers are happy to do that because, obviously, with each poet, we're showcasing a poem, typically from their latest book and encouraging listeners, ‘Well, if you like this one, then go and buy the book.' So, yes, absolutely, you've gotta be super careful. It's the same with song lyrics. It's so easy to think, ‘Well, I'll just put a couple of lines in my story because the characters are in a bar and that's the song that's playing and it related to them,' but no, you really can't do that. Joanna: You have to be super careful, that's why I wanted to mention it. Let's talk about the interesting poetry publishing side. Because yes, poems are great when they're performed by voice but they're also, a lot of them, in books, I have a lot of poetry books too, they're designed in print to look a certain way on the page. I feel like a lot of people set them out in certain ways, or some people format things, say, without capital letters or they have things running onto different lines that you would've put just in a sentence if it was prose. Talk about what are the options with publishing. Why is print so important for poetry, and what are the options for poets in terms of the different publication routes, and what are you doing? Mark: Actually, print isn't necessarily important for all poets. I mean Homer may or may not have written it down himself… Joanna: He is dead! Mark: …or herself. It started off as an oral medium and, to this day, as you said, there are performance poets who say the real thing is the live experience with the audience. And the book is like a souvenir to them, and they say, ‘It's not the real thing,' say, ‘Don't judge me by the book, judge me by the show.' So, it's a wonderful kind of hybrid. I think it is an amphibious form, it can live in the water or on the land. And talking to poets sometimes, you can see that the way it's laid out on the page may or may not have a really strong relationship to the way they read it out loud. But in terms of publishing options, the poetry world is very conservative, folks. It's made me think of the fiction world about 10 or 20 years ago. There are indie poets, there is an indie poet scene, but that's not the route I have taken. I know this has raised eyebrows in a few quarters because all my non-fiction I do publish independently because I like to be in control of it and do it my way. But I'm going the traditional route for the actual publication of the poems, but I'm also having my cake and eating it by having a podcast where I get my direct relationship with the audience. One big reason for going the traditional route is it's a very practical one, and that is that I want to reach the readers who love poetry the most. And right now, as a general rule, those people are far more likely to read poetry that is presented via a publisher. If I decided to self-publish my poems, which I could do, I know how to do it technically, I would be missing out on that core poetry readership. And I don't want to do that. I do want to reach a wider audience as well but I also want to reach the real enthusiasts. We can argue about whether that's fair, or that's the way the poetry world should be but I think sometimes, as authors and creators, we need to deal with the world the way it is rather than the way we think it should be. For instance, if you're writing genre fiction and romance or science fiction or thrillers and you say, ‘Well, I don't like e-books. To me, a real book is a print book so I'm only going to publish in print,' you're going to miss out on a lot of the hardcore readers of that genre. So, one big reason is just that practical access to the readership that I want. Another reason is more of an artistic one. Which is one big misconception about poetry is we often think it's a solitary art, that it's all about the individual poet channeling their visions and expressing their unique talent. And, obviously, there is some truth to that but, if you read a lot of poetry, after a while, you realize it's more like a massive group writing project that's happening across space and time and even between languages. If you read any significant poet, you're going to find ideas and allusions and references and poetic forms that have come from other poets and, quite often, translations or rewritings or answering back to other poets' work. To me, writing poetry means being a part of that conversation with other poets. Where you're reading each other's work and responding to it and discussing it and so on, as well as the ghosts of the past. Right now, if you want to be part of that conversation, then it's much harder to do that as a self-published author. It's very much expected you'll have a publisher and that will be your entry into that world. So, that's the route I'm going. Those are the main reasons. There's other things like print quality. The average poetry book is typically 60, 70, 80 pages and you try getting Kindle Print to align the spine properly on a book that that's thin, the title on the spine. Also, a lot of the poetry publishers really do go to town in terms of print quality and font and paperweight and presentation, so, there's the experience of reading the book and holding it in a way that it's a beautiful object to contemplate. So, all of those combine together. At the moment, traditional publishing is the main game, I'm afraid. Joanna: I'm still going to challenge you on it because there are plenty of people, for example, who will work with a printer to do a beautiful print object, which is the same printer as the poetry publisher might use. And there are lots of ways to reach people in different mediums and ways to get a poetry audience to buy that book. I want to go back to what you said at the beginning about your poetry being the foundation of who you are and ask whether it's really about validation and acceptance of peers and the deeper side of being a creator and a poet. You're an award-winning poet. Awards, I feel, are part of validation. And I also feel that a publisher that is known for great poetry is validation for your art. Forget all the marketing and print quality, is it really about validation? Mark: From the ego's perspective, yes, of course. Joanna: But that's important. Mark: Yes, sure. We all have an ego, and that's part of it. I have gone back and forward and thought about this and partly it is that I love the poetry world. It's easy to think of gatekeepers as being the big bad enemy, etc., but the poetry world, it's not like there's a lot of money at stake. Nobody is in this for the money, they're all enthusiasts. I've grown up with this world, I've been growing up reading certain publishers and enjoying their output and the style of work that they put out there, and I wanted to be part of that world and play that game. The idea of going and printing my own books and supervising a printer and storing all of that, it just doesn't excite me. Joanna: And, obviously, I'm challenging you, and I feel the same way. I feel like you're an indie author for your non-fiction, we have our money-making books and then we have our books that are art and our books of our hearts. For example, I still want to win an award for my fiction. I don't know whether I want traditional publishing, but I probably still do, I still think that's part of the validation of the industry. So, I think it's important for people listening to separate the business side and the money-making side from the art sometimes. It doesn't have to be both, does it, all the time? Mark: There's always something that you can get attached to. If you're writing a more commercial field, you can get attached to the money, or a field that has got a wider audience, you could get attached to fame. Poetry, yes, of course, it's very easy to get attached to the whole professional reputation and peer review and how you're seen within that community. But whatever field that you're in, there's going to be some temptation for the ego. One thing I say to my clients…because I get all kinds of different versions of this from different clients. I get some artist clients who will come in and say, ‘I don't know if I want to play the gallery game and have my work represented in high-end galleries and introduced to people in a certain way or if I'd rather just go direct and sell it and have an online presence.' What I say to clients is, ‘Play the game you want to play. Because whatever you do, there's going to be an upside and there's going to be a downside.' And it's all a game. But you've got to think about the game that really appeals to you that you think, ‘You know what? I would enjoy playing that,' as well as, ‘I think I have a reasonable chance of competing.' Joanna: And you can play a different game for different projects. Mark: Yes, absolutely. Joanna: Exactly. We're so lucky to have the choice now. There used to be only one game and now there's lots of games. I don't think you can play the same game with the same book, that's important. Mark: No, you can't. And also, even within the same world, so like I said, I'm having my cake and eating it. I'm going the traditional route for the actual publication, and that's got its own rewards and frustrations, it moves very slowly, for instance, but then, having the podcast as a direct, like I said, visceral medium where I've got my own platform, my own voice in the world. Weirdly enough, there's a stigma against self-publishing poetry, but people quite admire the fact that you can make a podcast. So, that's a weird loophole in the poetry world, which I'm quite happy about. I do think, if you're going to think about this maybe from a slightly more strategic perspective, just think about if you want to do well at whatever game it is you choose, then you just think, ‘What are the rules? What are the parameters? And what are the things that maybe not so many people are doing, and could that give me a little bit of an edge or a little bit more fulfillment and satisfaction in how I approach it?' Joanna: Absolutely. And, of course, both of us use podcasting to both serve our community and also as a vehicle for our businesses in terms of your '21st Century Creative,' and this podcast, ‘The Creative Penn.' And now we both have podcasts, I have my Books and Travel Podcast and you have ‘A Mouthful of Air,' which are more passion projects. It does take a lot of work and it costs money to produce. You have very high-value production, I don't spend as much on high-value production as you do. But, if people are thinking, ‘Oh, is podcasting really worth it?' You talk there about some of the recognition you can get in a community. Can podcasting pay for itself financially, or is it worth it for the reputation and the other ways you can get a return? Mark: Firstly, it's absolutely worth it for the pure joy of doing it. Any time that I spend writing or recording this show, including recording my own episodes or interviewing poets, it's a delight and the time just disappears. I work on it in the mornings, typically, and it's lunchtime before I know it. Another really cool motivation is just connecting with listeners. When I get a response, like the person who said, ‘I used to run screaming from poetry and now you've opened the door,' or if I talk to a poet and they have a good experience and they felt that they've been able to put themselves out there into the world, that is, absolutely the core of what makes it worth doing. And if that's not there, if you're only doing it because you think, ‘I need to do something to build my reputation or generate income or sales or whatever,' then find another way of doing it. In terms of time and money, yeah, you're right, Jo, I am a perfectionist about audio particularly. I always want to have high production values and music and I like having the atmospheric soundscapes that Javier Weyler creates for both of my shows. And it's not cheap to do this. So, again, just for anybody listening, you don't necessarily have to be as perfectionistic as this, there are lower-budget ways of doing a perfectly good show. In terms of what I wanted to achieve, my first show, ‘The 21st Century Creative,' pays for itself via coaching clients, and I've also recently added a Patreon membership. But for the new show, ‘A Mouthful of Air,' it's an art project and I can't really see a lot of commercial potential. I don't really have that commercial interest in it. But I didn't want to compromise on the production quality. So, I did something I've never done before, and that's to apply for public funding from Arts Council England. I thought there is value for other people here, it's really a public art project. I'm going to be sharing poems and connecting poets with listeners. So, if I do it well, there's going to be a benefit to the listeners, there's going to be a benefit to the poets, and there's a benefit to their publishers. I really want this to be my contribution to the poetry world. I made this argument to the Arts Council. I filled out the longest application form I have ever done in my life. And I'm very pleased to say they responded and they gave me the full amount of the funding. So, thank you very much to Arts Council England for stepping up and doing that. Sometimes I hear from creatives who say, ‘I'd just like to be funded to make my art,' that hasn't been my experience of how the funding world works. You've always got to sell your ideas. I had to really think hard and make my case and say, ‘This is how it will help me develop as an artist but also this is what's in it for the audience, this is what's in it for the public, this is what's in it for the poets and their publishers, and so on.' Whatever you're doing, if you want to do it at a high level and you get it out into the world, and even if you're giving it away for free, like a podcast, you've still got to sell it. You've got to sell the idea to advertisers or patrons or clients or sponsors or a funding body. And then you've got to go out there and sell it to people who have got the listeners, who've got an infinite choice of other podcasts that they could be listening to. Joanna: I actually really love that you've done that because, again, in the same way that you talked about the different kinds of publishing, it's not either/or. It's the same, you have a coaching business, you're an indie. You sell online courses, you have done anyway in the past, and now you're applying for a grant. I think it's the same. You don't have to just do one thing, it doesn't have to be all grants or all indie or all coaching. I think that's what I want to encourage people is to think wider than just the one thing. Obviously, we're both full-time creative entrepreneurs so we can branch into these other things. I've been thinking about this a lot, actually. As we speak today, I've just put out my 10-year-anniversary post, it will be in the past when this goes out, but this idea that, after a number of years, your confidence perhaps grows and your income is steady enough in other areas that you can actually branch out into things that you might have been putting off because you couldn't afford it in other ways, and now you can. Now's the right time to branch into these more passion projects. Mark: Definitely. Looking back, it was years ago I had the idea for the two shows, I wanted to do a poetry show and I wanted to do the coaching show. And I started with the coaching one partly because I was reasonably confident it would make money and, therefore, it would pay for itself and all the equipment I was buying, not to mention the training and whatever. But also because, creatively, the poetry show is more complicated and more demanding emotionally and there's more people involved, there's more moving parts. I'm really glad I did the coaching show first because, although it's longer, in terms of production, it's simpler to do. You're right that, again, you've got to think a bit strategically about, ‘Well, if I do this first, that will get me to there. And then when I get to there, then I will have more options creatively, hopefully, financially and business-wise.' Joanna: Brilliant. Where can people find you and the podcasts and everything you do online? Mark: Starting with the poetry show, which is my new baby so I want to introduce it to everybody, it is ‘A Mouthful of Air' on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and all the usual podcasting platforms. The website is amouthfulofair.fm. And, if you go to the website, you can sign up for an email subscription, even if you listen to the audio podcast via an app, and you will get a transcript of every single episode, including the text of the poems. If you want to read the poem as well as listen to it, go to amouthfulofair.fm and sign up for the email version and you can experience the amphibious nature of poetry. And then, on social media, we are @amouthfulofair on Twitter and Facebook. And on Instagram, I'm now an Insta poet, the poems are going up @airpoets on Instagram. If you're interested in the other podcast, ‘The 21st Century Creative,' that is 21st Century Creative on all the usual places. And my coaching site is lateralaction.com. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Mark, that was great. Mark: Thank you, Jo, I really enjoyed this. You took me to some unusual places for a podcast interview. So, thanks.The post Writing And Podcasting Poetry With Mark McGuinness first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are the different ways that authors can use NFTs to reach readers and earn money with blockchain technology? How can we address the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that is inevitable when faced with new technological options? Jessica Artemisia Mathieu explains some of the business models with NFTs. In the intro, and in a longer segment after the interview, I talk about some of the things I'm considering around what could be the ecosystem of the next iteration of online business. This episode is sponsored by my wonderful patrons, who give me the freedom to investigate the future of creativity and share it with you here. If you find the episode useful, please consider supporting me at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn or buy me a coffee (or two!) at BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn Jessica Artemisia Mathieu is a sci-fi fantasy author and digital marketing agency owner. She's also the creator of The Sovereigntii, which uses NFTs on blockchain as a new form of storytelling, community, and income. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Business models that authors can consider with NFTsThe language of NFTs and blockchainHow Jessica manages The Sovereigntii, and her collaborations with other creators in other worldsHow fear, uncertainty and doubt hold creatives back from what is already a thriving creator ecosystemCopyright and NFTs (Note, it will all depend on your contract, smart or not!)Addressing the ecological and environmental issues with blockchainIn the extended segment after the interview (at around 42 mins), I talk about what I learned and recap the business models, adding extra ideas around practicality, mindset, and licensingThe 3 things you need to do regardless of technological platform: Create IP, License it, Reach readers/Find an audience You can find Jessica Artemisia at TheSovereigntii.com and on Twitter @JessArtemisia Transcript of Interview with Jessica Artemisia Joanna: Jessica Artemisia Mathieu is a sci-fi fantasy author and digital marketing agency owner. She's also the creator of ‘The Sovereigntii,' which uses NFTs of blockchain as a new form of storytelling, community, and income. Welcome, Jessica. Jessica: Hi, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk about this. First up, tell us a bit more about you and your background in writing and publishing. Jessica: Writing I started as soon as I could read and write. I've been a fantasy nerd my entire life and I've always dreamed of being a fantasy author. But I didn't start really, really writing until about 10 years ago. I still didn't share because I never really felt that it made sense to try to pursue it professionally. Because the business models at the time … you could be a best-selling author and still need a day job. And for me, I didn't have enough energy, honestly, to be a best-selling author and have a day job, like a full-time job. It just wasn't realistic for me. I did end up starting to take writing seriously a couple of years ago anyway because it's a passion, it's kind of just in my soul and I had to try it. I started actually getting published. But the problem remained, so I decided to dive into marketing, digital marketing, to find an alternative business model. And that's how I ended up getting into NFTs. Joanna: You're talking about getting published and marketing. Is that traditional publishing and book marketing or other forms? Jessica: I did get traditionally published and I also had some interest from a really big agency in L.A. for a manuscript I was working on. But I still didn't feel that the publishing industry was right for me. I've been doing marketing since 2005, but it wasn't really focused on digital marketing. So, I started learning marketing in a general sense to understand the industry more deeply. And I did that for the purpose of finding a new business model for authors. Joanna: I think it's really interesting. And mentioning that publishing wasn't really a good fit and feeling like it's strange, I often feel that some independent authors, us included, have perhaps more in common with the tech industry than we do with the publishing industry. Even though product comes out of a book manuscript, I feel like there is quite a big difference between some of the people in the traditional industry and some authors — and then authors who are more comfortable with technology. Do you think that's the basis of why you were feeling that way, it's just your interest was much more developed, in a way? Jessica: The tech is okay for me. I feel very native in the digital environment and marketing. I just didn't think that it was a good business model. For me, a good business model means you do it and you make a lot of money. That's what it means. So, if I do it and I do it well and I'm successful and I still don't make a lot of money, to me, that's just not a good business model. For me. People have different ways that they value things or judge things as good or not good. For me, I mean, if I like I wanted to make $100,000, $150,000 being a full-time author…or why not a million or $50 million? An entrepreneur can start a business and make $5 million or $50 million. A writer who contributes enormously to the culture and the economy might only make $35,000 if they're lucky or if they're a best-selling author. That's not to say that making less money is somehow inferior, but for me, I just don't have the energy to be an author and contribute that way and also feed myself and put a roof over my head and take care of all my other responsibilities. I just couldn't balance that. So, I wanted to find a different way. Joanna: I love that. And we love ambition on this show. We don't mind talking about money. So, that's brilliant. You've mentioned business models a couple of times. Let's start on the broad level of going through the business models that you're talking about, and then we can get down into the detail of what you're doing specifically. What are the different business models with NFTs? Jessica: There are actually infinite possibilities. And it's really open to the innovation and creativity of anybody who comes to the blockchain to start a business. There are different blockchains, of course, and they have their different communities and their different ways of doing things. Ethereum is the most popular right now. It's the most established blockchain and the biggest community, but it has really high gas, and it's a problem. It's like you might have a $70 transaction fee, so that limits the type of the model that you would use. A few of the popular ones are PUNKS Comics, a comic book that's released on the blockchain, and I think there are maybe a few thousand, maybe, in existence and they're all minted and you can buy them as an NFT. There's ‘Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult,' which is really popular and it's like a Dungeons & Dragons kind of thing, community lore building. And that was really popular. It's considered a blue chip. ‘PUNKS Comic' is considered a blue chip too. ‘Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult' was really fun because it actually involved the community in the writing. And then there's ‘Etherpoems,' which are on-chain poetry, and they were just literally minted on the blockchain. And then on Solana. I'm actually part of another project besides the one I started, which is called ‘Saiba Gang‘ and we're minting end of October, early November. And I'm writing a manga for it. I'm a partner in the project. I get a percentage of the drop, which might be close to $2.6 million. And that's what's exciting about being a creative or writer on the blockchain is that there's just massive opportunity. There's Gloom Punk, which is writing a story with community-directed lore, and Soul Gods, which is also doing lore. So, you can be a writer on a project that's based on art, or you can partner with an artist, or with AI to create art that represents your story, or you can just straight up mint your story. There's a lot of different ways to do that. And, on the different blockchains, there's going to be different options based on what kind of technology has been developed already for that. Joanna: There's lots of exciting things there. We've got to circle back and say what some words mean. I've done quite a few episodes on NFTs and blockchain now, but I know people are still struggling. How do you explain what is a blockchain and what is an NFT to non-technical people? Jessica: I had to figure that out too. And depending on how you talk about it, it's pretty simple actually. A blockchain is a digital ledger. It records transactions and it's distributed to hundreds or thousands of different nodes where the data is stored. And that makes it really, really, really hard to falsify, you can't go back and change it. So, it creates a trust in the digital world because you can't change, you can't alter the data. And it's also distributed and decentralized, so no one person controls the data. And it's public, so everyone can see all the data. So, that's the blockchain, that's the basics of blockchain, the blockchain concept. An NFT is a digital asset that's recorded on that blockchain. So, it can be considered the original of an art piece. For example, if you mint your book or a chapter or a character or a scene on the blockchain, that can be proven as yours because the record is public and unchangeable. It's like being the creator of the ‘Mona Lisa.' The ‘Mona Lisa' is infinitely copied but there's only one ‘Mona Lisa' and that kind of provenance is really important. And the blockchain creates the ability to find out the provenance of a digital asset. Makes sense? Joanna: Yes. Well, it makes sense to me but I know often people need to hear it multiple times as well for the idea to sort of drop…well, let's use the word ‘drop.' You mentioned the ‘minting' and the word ‘drop'; what do those things mean? Jessica: To mint an NFT is to basically just create a record of it on the blockchain. Joanna: And the drop? Jessica: To make it known or public, so to make it available for sale. Joanna: So, it's basically like when we publish a book, it's like the day we publish a book and press publish, it's the same as minting and it's the day we drop. It's just different language, isn't it, for a different community? Jessica: Exactly. It comes out of the cryptocurrency world. Minting, it's like a coin you mint. You mint a penny or you mint a coin. Minting it is the process of creating an actual coin. So, they took that language from creating currency, hard currency, to creating digital currency, and now it's minting on the blockchain, the digital assets. Joanna: Then I think this is the next question because many authors are uncomfortable with digital wallets, with cryptocurrency. Most people have heard of bitcoin now probably, Ether, as a currency, let alone a blockchain. And there are, let's face it, lots of scams out there, there are lots of good things but people have a lot of doubt around crypto. Do people need to know programming? Do they need to have a wallet? Do they need to have cryptocurrency like Ether in order to do NFTs? Jessica: You definitely do not have to have any technical background at all. I do think having a basic understanding of best practices for security is important, but if you follow them there's very, very low chance of getting scammed. But it's possible. One of the things you do is you have a cold wallet, which is where you store it offline, or you don't keep your valuable assets in a wallet that you use for transactions. [Note from Joanna: This is what I do with my ‘normal' bank accounts as well. Don't keep a big balance in a transactional account.] So, there are just basic good practices that you can do. And it's pretty simple, most people don't have a problem. When you follow the best practices, you don't have to worry. But right now, you do need to have a wallet with Ethereum or Solana or Wax or Tezos in it, those are all different blockchains that are all being used for NFTs right now. But they're really easy to set up. Joanna: As we record this, it's before Frankfurt Book Fair. And, at Frankfurt, I know there's a couple of new platforms launching within the publishing industry. And, of course, PayPal is going to be doing crypto, Shopify, and eBay as well. There are all these different mainstream sites that are going to be offering these blockchain options. I almost feel, like in 2022, what we might see is people doing these without the need, it might be almost hidden. For example, no one needs to be able to program to format an ebook and upload it onto Amazon. You don't need to know HTTP or you don't need to know any kind of internet-y techy stuff to use it. I feel that it will be the same way with NFTs and blockchain. What do you think? Jessica: I agree completely. They're definitely making a streamlined process where it's a really low barrier to entry to make it easy for everybody, and secure. I do think that there is going to be a lot more opportunity if you do know the basics of the tech. It's really exciting, and it takes some getting used to but it's really, really fun. And, if you limit yourself to the platforms of other people there's a huge price to that. Joanna: I'm with you, and I almost feel like I did getting into ebooks, in 2008, 2009, and getting into podcasting in 2009, when there weren't many people doing this. But you can see, the way things are going, some of the early people did well. And, of course, I think books will be quite different to the art space where the valuations are massive. But you've talked about some of those options. When I look at it, I think, ‘Oh my goodness, there are so many options. I don't know where to start.' If people want to get started, what do you recommend? Jessica: I would probably, number one, join Twitter and join the community and just start talking to people. It's a really, really friendly, open, inclusive community that's just having a really great time. It's a great global 24/7 party. And that's definitely the place to start. And I probably would…this is going to sound like…oh, man, people are going to hate me for this, but probably skip Ethereum. The transaction fees are so ridiculous right now, to me, it's offensive to my soul because it's exclusive of people, of small to medium-sized businesses that are not, like, blue-chip whale-backed. Whale is a really big investor, not venture capital-backed. So, Ethereum's pretty hoity-toity right now. You have to have a lot of money to be able to trade on that blockchain. Solana is excellent, and it's a small and growing community. Now is really a great time to get into it. There's a ton of lore-based projects coming out and you don't have to have art. I sold a chapter of my book, I didn't even have the rest of the book out yet. I sold it for like $400, $450, just a chapter of my book. And because the writing…if someone reads it, and they're like, ‘Oh, this is good. This is going to be big,' they're investing in it and they become an owner of it. And then, of course, you always get royalties anytime that's sold. Then, when they become an owner, then they also have an incentive to spread the word about your book, so then they become a collaborator in building your business. And your community, when they own pieces of your work, then they become your marketing, they can become your marketing team also because they're invested in making their investment in your book successful because then they can resale at a profit. Joanna: Right. So, let's get into the detail of what you're doing then. You've mentioned a few business models, you mentioned there putting a chapter on Solana. So, what are you doing? Tell us a bit more about how you're putting things together right now. Jessica: Okay. So, real quick, I actually put it on Ethereum in June, and I just don't recommend Ethereum anymore. My whole project right now is on Ethereum and we're moving it to Solana. Basically, what I'm doing is a completely different way for fans to be involved in the experience and the generation of value of a creative IP project. I have my book, which is ‘The Sovereigntii' series. And there's my aspect and then I'll get into a little bit more about how there's community world-building too. My book has different characters, it has a map, it has a whole world. And all the races can be created through AI and each one can be sold as a character that people can create fan fiction from. And they can sell that fan fiction and then I get a percentage of it. So, the fans can become co-creators in my world by buying NFTs that give them the right to write related fiction. Not using my characters but using the platform of like the environment, the world. So, I have my IP which I'm building and people buy pieces of it. It's actually free to read. It's free for anyone to read the actual story, anyone can read it. It's available for free on Medium. But if you want to join the community and if you believe in it as a project that is going to be big one day, you want to get a piece, then you join the community. You also don't have to buy anything to join the community, I really want it to be as inclusive as possible. And then people can just decide for themselves what level of ownership they want to have of the project, as we say in the NFT community, ‘aping in.' We ape into a project. So, what level they want to ape in. I'm building my platform that way but it's also a co-creative world-building tabletop role-playing game. And there's a lot about it. I almost feel like this is a massive info dump. I feel like, in a couple of years, there's going to be other reference points and it won't be so like info-dumpy. We're working on the tabletop role-playing game, it's in progress. So, actually people can take the NFT elements, which I call basically ‘stems,' but we might call them like ‘seeds' or whatever, their inspiration, their characters, their scenes, their different aspects. And then people get together and create on a map and do a co-creative scene storytelling together. So, fans become characters in the world and they co-create a story together in the world using the inspiration and elements of the world that I've offered through NFTs which they own. Joanna: So, it's very community-centered, your project? Jessica: Yes, very. Very much so. Joanna: Right. So, there's ownership almost in a collective world. What is the situation with copyright and NFTs? Jessica: The same copyright applies in terms of my writing. No one else can sell it, no one else can use my characters. If they do, I can sue them just like in any other case. But in the model that I'm building, it's built in that I get royalties from people using elements of what I create. Let's say I create a race of people, this group of people called the High-Pitched Screech. And you just imagine somebody screeching, and that's their name. And they live in the Pits of Madness. And I have all these portraits of these high-pitched screeches that I've created using AI and I can sell each individual as a character that somebody else can then take and tell that story and use it within my system. If they do that and if they create value that that character becomes valuable and is resold or whatever and any NFTs that they create relating to that character or that story that they've written in my world, I get a royalty on. Joanna: I love the smart contract idea, which is, you can basically code a contract. Right? And, well, let's not say ‘code,' it doesn't have to be that technical. The smart contract means you'll get a percentage down the line, and if people want to sell their stake or their NFT, you get a percentage. This really is game-changing for publishing. I'm fascinated with this community idea because I think, originally, like you mentioned, I sold a chapter of a book on Ethereum blockchain. In my head, I think that's what I have been thinking and what many authors have been thinking, which is, ‘Okay, I'll sell five limited edition copies of my ebook. Each one will have its own image in and there'll be a video that goes with it.' To me, that's like just publishing in another format that people can sell. And I still think that's completely fine, but it's not as ambitious as what you're talking about, which is, essentially, creating this massive world and having lots of creators within it. Would that be right? Jessica: Definitely. The other thing too, it's not just for me, it's also a platform for others. Let's say another fantasy author just doesn't want to build the whole system, the whole platform of community and really utilizing Web 3 in a way that's kind of the exciting way of using it. To me, I mean I find it really exciting. They can buy, what I call, a ‘publishing-rights avatar' in my world. And for only like 10% they can just create as much as they want. They can create their own map, their own world. And then the only royalties that go to me within the system are 10% of their world that they generate. The 10% of the money that they generate in their world, which is different from 30% of Amazon royalties that Amazon takes. Basically, it's like an agent takes 10% of what sells for an author. Joanna: Okay. So, I get it, you're building more like a platform. So, ‘The Sovereigntii' is more like a platform and there are books as part of it but there's also, like you said, all these characters. Tell us, how are you generating the AI art characters? Because I find that all so fascinating. Jessica: I use Artbreeder, and I have a video on YouTube that shows you how I do it. I don't leave any of my tricks off the table. I love it when people make really beautiful art. And there are also other systems that you can use that are text-based, it's called VQGAN. Joanna: I have talked about Generative Adversarial Networks before, don't worry! [Check out the Future of Creativity episodes for more on this.] I think what I like about this is that it's a combination of lots of different technologies. You mentioned Web 3. What do you think Web 3 means? Jessica: Web 1 came about in the mid to late '90s with websites. And that was the introduction of the internet to the world. That's Web 1.0. Web 2.0 is social media where we all got online and started being social and connecting with each other. Web 3.0 is with the advent of assets, digital assets on the blockchain, you can buy and sell and create whole business systems and own things online. And that's Web 3.0 is the financial and asset aspect, ownership aspect of the internet. Joanna: I think there are lots of aspects of Web 3 but it's almost like the static website, and then the mobile website, and now the blockchain ecosystem. That could be another way. Or people putting cryptocurrency is a Web 3 idea. Metaverse, doing VR and AR is also Web 3. I think we're moving into this next almost 20-year phase, I think. The mobile revolution was sort of 2007, so we're 15 years in. And, let's be fair, it'll probably take five years before all of this is mainstream. Jessica: Right. Definitely. Joanna: We're at very early stages. Okay, still there are so many things we could get into, I hope people are being inspired by this. A lot of people have heard that there's environmental issues with blockchain. Can we tackle the ecological, environmental issues that people have? Jessica: I hear that a lot too. I think it's really important to always understand where the information you're getting is coming from and who's saying it and why they might be saying it. I think it's definitely not something that isn't true. Blockchain, especially proof of work blockchain, not proof of stake but proof of work, like Bitcoin and the way that Ethereum is right now, although that's changing to proof of stake, which will then be 99.99% better than it is now ecologically. [Check out Ethereum's technological shift to Ethereum 2.] Understanding that the blockchain represents a very serious threat to the way that the political economy structure of basically the world as it is right now, the people who are really invested in that and who are stakeholders in that system are going to not want the mass adoption because it really threatens their power. They tend to own a lot of the media outlets, they're the people really in power. And so, there's a lot of information out there, and we call it FUD, which is fear, uncertainty, and doubt. If someone were to take the same criticism of ecological impact and level it at the publishing industry… Joanna: Yeah, book pulping! Jessica: Exactly. Bitcoin, for example, which is the biggest offender, which has nothing at all to do with NFTs, consumes about 0.25% of the global energy. So, it's a really small percentage. And things like fashion, book publishing, Amazon…a lot of people sell on Amazon but I mean the environmental impact of Amazon is much higher. Joanna: Just packaging, for example, packaging is a big deal. I'm with you. I think that there are some issues that are being solved. For example, you mentioned Solana instead of Ethereum and Ethereum instead of Bitcoin, it's almost like with every iteration, things are getting better and easier and, like you said, cheaper. You mentioned gas fees, and that's like a transaction fee that you have to pay. [Check out this list of environmentally friendly cryptocurrencies from Sept 2021 and do a Google search for the most up-to-date info on blockchain and the environment as it is changing every day.] What we don't want to do on this is to go into massive detail on everything. Because, as we said, it is changing. I do want to come back to the people. Okay, so I got a glimpse of your ambitious world community, but the big question is, so where are these people? We all struggle to find readers for a blooming ebook, let alone someone who wants to buy an AI-generated character in a new world. How are you finding people to join your world? And do you think that there's going to be enough people to sustain all of this? Jessica: I'm able to scale step by step. I'm taking small steps because that really builds a strong foundation. But also, I've already sold in my collection something like $5,617. I mean approximately. That's in the past like four-and-a-half months coming from no audience. Starting from zero. That's how much I've sold. Which is more than most people with zero audience never having published a book, I had published a story, can make right away, which is a good start, it's a good start for me. So far so good. But also, with that, one of the problems I think that with writing and selling a story is that there has to be demand for it in order for people to buy it, but they have to read it in order to like it and, therefore, have demand. Demand is created by desire, desire is created by kind of like knowledge of the book. Right? That's always been a problem. How do you get people to want a book they've never read? They want to buy a book they've never read. So, a chapter works. Or you make the writing free and then create this really amazing community experience. Which is what, for example, ‘Gloom Punks,' which is on Solana, they're doing a story, ‘Soul Gods' and ‘Saiba Gang.' ‘Saiba Gang' is set to sell a bunch of these generated avatars, and they're writing a manga to go with that, to continue creating the community. Writers can partner with artists. And one gets a million dollars and the other gets a million dollars. And then you have to have the developing team. It is a team effort and it's a community effort, and that's what makes it amazing and fun. The other thing too is you don't have to build it all yourself. For ‘Saiba Gang,' I'm not building any of that, I am just writing the manga. I'm just the writer for it and I don't have to worry about all that. I can just write and be creative. I don't have to do it full time but I get a percent, and that's what's exciting for authors. You could become a Loremaster for a project, do that part-time, make a considerable amount of money, and also be writing and building your audience in the Web 3 world. If you have 10,000 people reading your writing in another project that's really popular, then they're also going to be interested in your writing outside of that. So, it's one way to build an audience. You don't have to make your writing free, but personally, I like that because it enables people to want to read it and know if they like it and be a part of the whole IP system. Smart contracts enable easier collaboration. Joanna: I think this is another thing, the idea of smart contracts enables this collaboration, this percentage that you talked about. This is very, very hard at the moment in the ‘normal' world. To give a percentage of revenue and resale to anyone else, it's practically impossible because there are humans who have to actually put that contract through. I have to pay some of my co-writers, and it's a right pain in the neck. Whereas, with smart contracts, it happens automatically. I want authors listening, you have to think much bigger around how you can collaborate, it's going to be much easier. For example, just a completely different idea, but like people ask me all the time to do various things and most of the time, I don't have the bandwidth or whatever. But if someone says, ‘Could you do this or lend your voice to this audiobook,' for example, ‘you can have a percentage of the drop,' then I'm far more likely to say yes to that as a possibility. What we're going to be seeing is, as you said, writers doing things for percentages for bigger names. For universe owners, like what you're aiming to build, and collaborative worlds, I think this is going to be huge. Right? Jessica: Absolutely. It's the community aspect, we're not doing it alone and then waiting for somebody else to sell our work for us. We're out there and we're with our fans and it's co-creative and collaborative. It could be, but it's collaborative in the sense that they become owners with you. It's been called an ‘ownership economy,' meaning that your fans, if they own a piece of your work, are part of it with you. And then they have an incentive to also share your work with their friends because the more that they generate value and make your project high value, the more they also get out of it. It's like they're the stockholders of your book. Joanna: And again, it doesn't have to be a book, it could be an audio project. I think this is fascinating. Just one other technical question. You mentioned Solana and then you mentioned OpenSea. Can you use the Solana blockchain through OpenSea? Jessica: Currently, no. They have Solsea. OpenSea is for the Ethereum blockchain and also the Polygon blockchain, which is considered a layer of Ethereum. Joanna: If people want to do an NFT on Solana, where do they do that? Jessica: There are a variety of options. I wouldn't necessarily be able to recommend any because I haven't personally used them. And a lot of them are young, and they work, they're great, but I'm not an expert in Solana. I know much more Ethereum and I'm moving towards Solana, for a lot of reasons, but a disclaimer, I cannot recommend these places because I haven't personally used them but I can say what some of them are, which is, I think it's called Magic Eden or something, and DigitalEyes, and Holaplex, and Metaplex if I'm correct. And Solsea. I don't know if they're going to be a good experience. Joanna: I think this is really important. Like we said, this is a new space, so we don't know what's going to happen with the various things. The very positive side of a blockchain like Ethereum is it's not going away at this point. Whereas a newer blockchain…I guess, to put it in terms…there were lots of websites in the dot-com boom, and in the year 2000, there were lots of dot-com websites that disappeared. But if you had picked Amazon, you were all good. I think this is the difficulty now is there is some speculation but what we're talking about is the principles of what this new ecosystem could look like. I think that's our overarching thing. Jessica: Right. Understanding the conceptual framework for creating a digital business around the IP that you're developing. Joanna: Absolutely. We mentioned maybe it will be five years before things are more mainstream. Although, as I said, there's Frankfurt Book Fair, which is traditional publishing, there are NFT platforms launching. For the next five years, how can independent authors position themselves for success in order to be ready for these new opportunities? Jessica: I would say the first thing I would do is get on Twitter and just start sharing your work. Let people see how brilliant you are, let people see what you're capable of, let them see how reliable you are. Build a reputation as an author and then let people know you're available as a Loremaster if that's what you want to do. And then you can start out in the Web 3 and learn from really amazing developers and project leaders and artists about how to build a successful project while getting paid and not doing all the work yourself. Projects will start reaching out to you, especially if they know that you're available. Loremasters having lore and projects right now is actually the next big step. Everyone was saying it's games, it's not because games are extremely difficult and expensive to make. All the projects now are moving towards lore. What do they need? Loremasters. So, now is the perfect time for writers to jump on, jump in, ape in. The water is really warm, people are super friendly. And also another cool thing, this is kind of a side note, I have never experienced like ‘tech bro' sexism or anything like that. I'm valued as a woman, I'm just valued. There's none of that tech-world-bro-iness that you have to worry about that I know a lot of people experience elsewhere. I can't say it's going to be the experience for everybody but it's kind of a new culture. And I think that's really exciting and I want people to realize how it's like a revolutionary culture, as well as a revolutionary technology. And now is the time to jump in, share your work, share your genius, let people know you're available as a loremaster, find projects you like, and mint them. Become an NFT owner, learn how the process works, and you're just going to have a really, really great time. Joanna: Just on ‘loremaster,' do you mean L-O-R-E? Jessica: Yeah. Joanna: Is that really a fantasy author thing? Jessica: It's an author thing, so the title of the person who creates the narrative IP for a project. There's the artist who creates the visual. There's the developer who create the technical, the code. There's also an emerging need that's very urgent right now for people who create a narrative story around the art to create an engaged and invested community in order to maintain the value of the NFTs and the art beyond the initial mint. Joanna: Ah. Like you said, it's a whole new community and language, it's like learning it all over again. When people come into self-publishing, they're like, ‘What do all these words mean?' This feels like all over again. People invent a language to put boundaries around a community. And so, again this is just learning a language. And inside of it, it's not as complicated as I think many people think from the outside. So, yeah, that's awesome. Where can people find you and everything you do online? Jessica: The easiest one is just @JessArtemisia on Twitter. And then my project is called ‘The Sovereigntii.' It's like a plural from another language that I was inspired by. So, it's TheSovereigntii on Twitter, and then thesovereigntii.com. And then ‘Saiba Gang,' which is saibagang.com. And that's the same on Twitter and the same, saibagang.com. And I'm totally open to connect with people and invite them into the community and help in any way that I can. And if anything I've said is like too lingo-y or whatever, I'm so sorry. I am swimming in it 24/7. Joanna: Oh, no, it's great. We have to get used to the language, so, it's good to hear you talk about it. Well, thank you so much for your time, Jessica, that was great. Jessica: Thank you so much, Joanna, I really appreciate it. My thoughts after the interview This is another futurist awareness episode as NFTs are still an emerging business model for creatives — so there will be language you don’t necessarily understand – but that’s OK.  Every domain has a language to learn in order to become comfortable with it. If you’re new to self-publishing, you’re probably confused by all the things we say and the different companies we work with for different things.I had a conversation with an author the other week and she didn’t know what permafree was, and had never heard of Kickstarter or ePub format or Draft2Digital or Kobo, let alone NFTs! I watched a documentary on the physics of bubbles the other night and it had a lot of scientific terms I’m not familiar with. I read the Financial Times in order to keep refreshing my knowledge on how the financial language works.  So don’t be frustrated — the language of blockchain and NFTs is bound to be confusing at first. That’s why I’m going to keep doing these discussions — because when you listen to conversations, the meaning slowly becomes clear and you make connections and understanding emerges. You will have an ‘aha’ moment at some point around blockchain, if you haven’t already!   I should also say that I am not an expert at this area, but I fully intend to become one, which of course, is how this site has always worked. If you’ve been following since I started in December 2008, you will know how much has changed and how much we’ve all had to learn as the industry has changed. It’s kinda scary, but also incredibly exciting! Consider me an enthusiastic newbie at this stage and it’s likely that I am getting some things wrong — it’s all about ‘beginner’s mind’ at this stage. Don’t get too technical or down in the weeds initially. You don’t need to know how to program the internet to use Amazon KDP to publish an ebook or a print book. You don’t need to know how PayPal works to send money across the world. The same is true of NFTs and it will only become easier as new applications are built on top of blockchains. In fact, I have a couple more interviews coming in the next few weeks with creators of these very tools for authors and publishing.  I’ve done a couple of interviews on this topic now — just go to TheCreativePenn.com/future to find them grouped together in one place, as well as my other futurist episodes around AI, auto-narration and more.  We are in VERY early days when it comes to NFTs and it is a bit Wild-West-y at the moment! There are new blockchains emerging all the time and new sites and groups of creators coming together — and inevitably, there is some hype and there will be rip-offs happening and there will be blockchains that don’t last and coins that go to nothing. But let’s face it, that happens in every arena — it is not specific to blockchain and crypto. There are also environmental issues around some blockchains, particularly Bitcoin and other ‘proof of work’ blockchains — but there are also some blockchains that are more environmentally friendly, and there is a proposed redesign of Ethereum around ‘proof of stake’ which will also reduce impact. The crypto and NFT community are (mostly) committed to the environment and if you spend a little time researching, you will find a lot of people dedicated to changing the infrastructure, so it works for the environment as well as creators.  In the meantime, you can always use carbon offsets through a site like https://aerial.is/ which has been used to offset NFTs from the latest Dune release, as well as by people like Ellen, Shakira, and Susan Sarandon.  Plus, if you want to question the ecological impact of blockchain, then you have to compare it to the rest of publishing — from the sustainability of ink and paper, to printing, shipping, packaging, pulping, and the electricity around digital products. It just means stepping back and considering the wider eco-system, rather than jumping on the things people have said on Twitter.   So despite the issues, don’t write everything off!  Jessica mentioned FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — and I have seen that in the author and publishing community over and over again since 2008, especially when it comes to technological innovation, or changes that take people outside their comfort zone. I still get people asking about the “stigma of self-publishing” as if it was 2010 all over again! The antidote to fear, uncertainty and doubt is to learn more about the area so you can have a conversation and make decisions from a more knowledgeable perspective. That’s what I am trying to lead you into through these various conversations — and soon, through my own experience as I am intending to drop my first NFT before the end of 2021. The opportunities within the NFT space are expanding — and I love Jessica’s ambition. There are going to be a lot of possibilities emerging for writers — just to recap, she mentioned a few:  Release your book or chapters as an NFT.  This is the most standard application of what we already do as authors and what I’m intending to do with Tomb of Relics. It’s one NFT package, there’s no community aspect, it’s a way for fans who believe in the value of your work to own a digital asset – and resell it as they like. I’m going to include the ebook with unique images — a photo of my hand edits on the original manuscript, and perhaps even some AI-generated art around a particular character, The Black Anchorite, who ages in a pretty cool way.  There might be a business model around accumulating special NFTs and then leasing them, or having a virtual bookstore somewhere like Decentraland, where you could resell or lease based around a metaverse community. There are so many options! Create a community based on your world or your IP.  This could be fiction or non-fiction, and then create NFTs within that — basically smart contracts that have various rights attached.  Jessica mentioned characters or the ‘right to write’ within the world — which I can see the application for those with larger shared worlds where people are already writing in them.  Have a look at saibagang.com. There’s a Lore button with a description of the world – “It is the year 2167 in Wintermoon City … “ and then info about the world and the characters. Then there’s a roadmap of development and how they will do the drops.  So you could collaborate and create something as big as that — or any kind of community model. Gary Vaynerchuk has Veefriends, which uses NFTs as access to a community and also as tickets to his events, for example, VeeCon 2022, “the world’s FIRST NFT-ticketed conference; a first-of-its-kind, multi-day event held specifically for an audience of 10,255 VeeFriends token holders. A real-life demonstration of NFT smart contract technology in action.” If you like building community, then this model is interesting. Become a writer for NFT projects.  Collaborate with other creators around building an ongoing narrative around images and communities and receive a percentage of the drop, or a percentage of royalties and resale going forward. I see this overlapping with the gaming episode I did with Edwin McRae in episode 571 on narrative design when he talked about how many writers are needed as the gaming industry expands. There are plenty of gaming companies building on blockchain so that is another angle.  This is just a tiny glimpse of what could be possible with a blockchain eco-system. Smart contracts will allow for so much more collaboration as they make it easy to split payments automatically without having to manually do everything, plus they make micro-payments more practical. So there are some great ideas here — but you don’t have to jump into anything. Just spend some time learning and opening your mind to possibilities.  Think back to the dot-com boom and bust and the internet craziness around 2000. But Amazon was founded in 1994 and Google in 1998, then Facebook in 2004. YouTube was founded in 2005 and it was silly cat videos for years before anyone took it seriously. Platforms rise and fall, but the most valuable companies now are built on the internet. Consider what opportunities will arise in a new ecosystem built on blockchain. You might not understand it all yet, but keep an open mind and as ever, I will attempt to step into it and make lots of mistakes so you don’t have to! Regardless of technology, it comes down to the same things: Create intellectual property assets. Writing books is still our primary focus — but it's also about understanding that you have created IP, not just a manuscript.Consider the best way to license that IP. NFTs and blockchain applications will offer new ways to do this — so once again, don’t sign contracts for “all formats existing now and to be created, for the life of copyright” as that will exclude you from all this! If you have signed away “digital rights” or even “ebook rights,” you might not be able to do it either. That is still to be worked out, but at least try for term limits and specify exclusions for ‘digital special editions/NFTs.’Consider how to reach readers — and that might have a community aspect, or not. Personally, I don’t want to run a community, and I value my time offline, so I am more likely to go with the model of the individual drops per book, and perhaps special audio projects, as well as collaborating with others for a percentage of drops.So many possibilities, and it comes down — as ever — to knowing yourself, knowing your book and your author brand, and knowing your reader, then making a choice that suits you. Interesting times, Creatives!  I’ve got a couple more episodes on NFTs coming up in the next few weeks on the new platforms emerging for the publishing industry — and then a round-up episode when I am ready to drop my own NFT before the end of the year.  Please leave a comment or question on the episode, and if you have experience with NFTs, I’d love to hear what business models you’re considering. Once again, a big thank you to my Patrons whose financial support enables me to spend time on these extra in-betweenisodes. If you found this useful, and would like an extra monthly audio Q&A where you get to ask your questions, please consider supporting the show at patreon.com/thecreativepenn or for a one-off donation, you can use BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn The post The Ownership Economy. Business Models Around NFTs With Jessica Artemisia first appeared on The Creative Penn.

On July 4, 2020, Kory Shrum received two phone calls. One from her uncle, saying her mother was found dead in her bedroom from an overdose. A second from a homicide detective saying he believes it was murder—and her uncle is the suspect. In this interview, Kory talks about how she turned her trauma into a true-crime podcast and memoir and how writing helped her process the experience. In the intro, 6 ways that this is the best time in publishing [Publishing Perspectives]; Content Creators deserve a bigger slice of the pie [Kristin Nelson]. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at www.draft2digital.com/penn Kory Shrum is a ‘USA Today' best-selling author of science fiction, fantasy, and thrillers. She's also a true-crime podcaster. Her latest book is a memoir, Who Killed My Mother? You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Studying poetry as a way to develop skills for fictionMaking the choice to write a memoir about a very difficult subjectWhy sharing feelings is so important in memoirTips for healthy ways to experience emotions while writingSeeking the truth in memoir and how memory plays a partTelling one story in multiple formats; podcast, book and audiobook You can find Kory Shrum at WhoKilledMyMother.com and on Twitter @koryshrum Transcript of Interview with Kory Shrum Joanna: Kory Shrum is a ‘USA Today' best-selling author of science fiction, fantasy, and thrillers. She's also a true crime podcaster. And her latest book is a memoir, Who Killed My Mother? Welcome, Kory. Kory: Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. I have been a fan of yours for years. I've been stalking you on the internet for years. And then I tried to steal your assistant, Alexandra. So it might be getting a little creepy at this point! Joanna: I really appreciate your support. And also what we were saying before we started recording that, because of our connection, I've discovered your novels and our readers, but we share some readers in the fiction space. I think a lot of this stuff is about connecting with people and people who are like us in some way. We've never met in person, maybe we never will, but it's so great to connect across the world, isn't it? So let's start. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Kory: I had loved books and writing and everything about the world of literature all of my life, but I didn't really get serious about it until college. I changed majors so many times because I had so many interests. Like you, I'm a multi-passionate, creative, and there are just so many things that I love about the world. And I love learning. I think it was like the fifth time that I went to my advisor's office and was like, ‘I'm thinking about changing my major.' And she was like, ‘Kory, Kory, Kory, listen, I just want you to go down to this office and take this test, and it will tell you what major you should be.' Joanna: Cool. Kory: And so I was like, ‘Okay.' Yeah. So you take a test, and it matches your interest to a field. And so I went down there, and I took the test. I matched an English major with, like, 94%, or something ridiculous. It was really clear that I should be studying literature, books, and things. I already had a creative writing minor at that point that I had basically completed, but I didn't think of the English major, because I was like, ‘Are there English major jobs?' But it turns out there are, and so I completed that. And then I went on to get an MA. And then I had to make the decision if I wanted a PhD in creative writing, or an MFA in creative writing. And you don't really need to do this in the real world. But it's like what people will tell you, ‘Oh, if you want to be a writer, get an MFA.' And so I did that. I chose the MFA because the Ph.D. seemed more like literary theory, whereas I just wanted to learn how to write really well. And MFAs are studio degrees. They want you to be writing. But the issue is, is that I like a lot of genre fiction and genre tropes. And it's not as accepted in academia as literary fiction. They have the high-minded…you could see it in capital letters, literary fiction. And so I was like, ‘Well, what am I going to study?' Because I can't really do vampire novels. I've had a teacher in class say, ‘I will accept no vampire novels this semester.' So I chose poetry instead. Because I thought, well, if I could master poetry, that's a mastery of description, and language and flow. I think that that would really help my fiction writing as well. I don't think it would be a waste of my time to learn how to write poetry. I chose to study poetry for my MFA. And it was great, I had amazing teachers, it was a wonderful experience. It was the first time in my life where I was around a lot of creative writing people who were really affirming to what I wanted to do. I was still writing my genre fiction in class, so I was clearly still doing both at the same time. I graduated, I started teaching. That's what you do, if you have an MFA. The primary job you would get is teaching, and I started pitching agents. I got a good agent, a really reputable agent. She was with me for four years. I gave her three manuscripts in that time, but she couldn't sell them, because even though we would get really nice feedback from all the big publishers like, ‘We really like Kory's writing. This is good stuff. We just don't know where to place it.' Because my fiction is very cross genre. Dying for a Living, for example, was the book she was shopping around. And I still don't know exactly where you would put that on the shelf. Is it a mystery? Is it a zombie novel? But it's not a zombie novel, because they're not the zombies we think of. It's really unclear. From a publisher perspective, they want to know exactly where to put it on the shelf. So she couldn't sell those. After about four years, this is when Argo-Navis, this self-publishing platform that, for a hot minute, I don't know if they're still doing it, they were using it to self-publish books they couldn't sell. So my literary agency was like, ‘Well, let's do your books through Argo-Navis.' But it was essentially a self-publishing platform, but the agent got 15%. And I was like, ‘Why would I do that?' Well, also because, at the time, I didn't know nearly as much as I know now about self-publishing. Now, of course, it seems like an easy question; of course, you wouldn't do that. But then the only deciding factor was that I had worked for several years, when I was at my MFA program, in a small press. New Issues Press is attached to the school I went to, and I was a layout editor for them. I also took a publishing class. So, because I worked at the press, I was very familiar with the whole book publishing process, how you get the manuscript, how you edit the manuscript, how you turn it into a book, how you get it out there into the world. So I was like, ‘I already know how to do that. Why would I pay her 15% if I'm going to have to do it myself anyway?' So it just didn't make any sense to me. So I broke up with my agent then, and just focused on writing as many books as I could. I finished out the Dying for a Living series while I was teaching as an adjunct professor. And then I had about 10 books out when I left to write full-time. That was 2018. After that, I've been putting out about four books a year, about three novels and a book of poetry since, and I still also read poetry submissions for the ‘Los Angeles Review.' That's my writing life. That's what it looks like now. Joanna: That's interesting. I just looked up Argo-Navis, because I hadn't heard of it. So 2012, 2013, that was when they were doing that. And at similar time, I think, it was Amazon White Glove was a similar thing where agents could basically self-publish on behalf of authors and take a percentage. There are so many of these things that come and go. Let's get into your latest book, which is a true crime memoir. And it is very personal. It is called Who Killed My Mother? And it is that, which is difficult, I guess. Why write this incredibly personal book, when it must have been very difficult to write? Kory: Well, I mean, you say, ‘Why do it?' like it was a conscious choice. But, to be honest, I was so consumed by the idea of doing it when it happened. The premise is that on July 4th 2020 I received two phone calls. The first was from my uncle, who said that he had gone into my mother's bedroom and found her dead, and he thought she had died of an overdose, which was surprising because she had drug abuse issues in the past, but she had been clean for a long time. Mostly, she couldn't do anything because her health had become so poor. Not that that necessarily stops some people. But in her case, she was just too ill to do anything. So I was surprised, but I wasn't horrified, or I wasn't suspecting anything at the time. But later that day, I got a second phone call from a homicide detective saying that he thinks it was foul play, that something bad had happened, and that he suspected my uncle, and that they were arresting him and taking him in. So now I was very confused and I was upset. And I was like, ‘What really happened to her and like, what went down in that house?' I remember waking up that night. I couldn't go to sleep. It was like 3:00 in the morning. I get up, I go down to my office, and I'm kind of just pinging around in my home office I'm rereading the stories I wrote about her in college about these other near death experiences where she had almost died because of his violence toward her and stuff. I was just so captivated by this idea that I have to sort through this and I have to understand what has happened. The only compulsion I had was, like, ‘Well, I'm going to have to write it down.' Like, ‘I'm going to have to write down everything that happens going forward. But I'm also going to have to write down what happened in the past to make sense of this life that I had with her. Because it was also that I couldn't really understand why her life had ended like this. I had to look back and understand her life in its entirety. So it's not like I was like, ‘Oh, I think I'll just do this.' It was more like I was completely possessed and compelled to organize her life, because there was so much confusion around how she died that I thought the only way to gain clarity would be to write my way through it. That's basically what I did was I used it as a tool to make sense of what had happened. Joanna: I think dealing with these terrible life situations, writing is obviously a way we can help ourselves, but you chose to go further and publish it. And we'll talk about podcasting it as well. Where is the line? I've read the book. It's a great book as a mystery. As you said, you were compelled to write this. Where's the line between writing as therapy and writing for publication? Kory: Fortunately, at this point I've put out 22 books or something like that. So there is some division in my brain I can switch back and forth to being Kory the publisher, Kory the editor, Kory the person with a lot of feelings. I can be each Kory when it's time to be each Kory. And I think that's just come with…I don't even know how long I've been writing now…18 years of experience of doing it. So it might make it easier. But, in essence, it's just that I wanted to be honest to the experience. So you said you've read the book. You probably are well aware of the fact that there's a lot of emotion in it, but not in an overwrought, I don't think, dramatic way. I don't feel like it was overdone. But I do keep you very close to what I was feeling at the time that things happened. Would you agree with that, or you want to say no? Joanna: Yes, I think you did. For people listening, for people who want to also write a memoir, you have to know where the line is between ‘this is my therapy, and this is for publication.' Kory: Right. So what I mean by that is, I want you to step into your feelings as a writer. I guess I'm thinking of the phrase, ‘Feel your feelings.' You always hear, ‘Feel your feelings.' I used to get so mad when people would be like, ‘Well, you just need to feel your feelings, Kory.' I'd be like, ‘What does that mean? Of course, I'm feeling my feelings. My feelings are so present, how can I not feel them?' But I think what they're talking about is getting really into the experience of an emotion as a way to process it. That connects to what you're saying about feelings as therapy, because that's what you do in therapy. You step into your feelings, you feel your feelings, you process it. And if it comes out raw, like in a messy way, if it's not worthy of publication at that time, that's okay. That's what editing is for. I have a wonderful editor in the UK, his name is Toby, and he would be able to clean that up. But, fortunately, I'd already done so much rewriting at the point that he saw it, it wasn't an issue. But it's not unnatural, when you're experiencing what you're going through, to just put it on the page however it comes out, because you want to be authentic with what you're feeling. The connection between people is what I think makes memoir special. We read memoir, because we want to experience other people's lives or experience other things that people have gone through. And when we do that, we're connecting with their experience, their emotional experience. If you're distanced from doing that, I think the experience won't be as rich for your reader. So absolutely step into it. You can always go back and do the editing and the publishing part later with a more critical eye. It's the same as fiction, at least it was for me, in the sense that, ‘If this doesn't work, or this detail doesn't work…' So, for example, I kept really good records as the investigation unfolded about, who said what, at what time. But sometimes, I wrote a piece of dialogue that was literally from a text message or something on the page, and it just looked ridiculous, because when you text, you shorthand or you talk in a very contextual way, and it doesn't work. You can rework that for flow, or you can drop that piece of dialogue altogether, if it's not doing anything for your story. The mechanics can always be sorted out later, but I absolutely think you can stay close to your feelings. It can be therapy, but it's also, at least for me…and maybe it's just because I'm a thinkie person. I'm an INTJ, so I'd lead with thoughts. But for me, it's more like sorting details and alleviating confusion than sort of drowning in emotion. Joanna: I agree with you on emotion being a really important part of memoir. The difference between memoir and autobiography as well is the first person POV but also the emotional connection. You write about death a lot. You've got this ‘Dying for a Living' series, and your books have death in. How else did your fiction writing help the memoir in terms of both with cliffhangers and the mystery side? Kory: Because I wrote the memoir, actually, first as a podcast, the chapter endings were a bit cliffhanger-y because I wanted you to then want to listen to the next episode. And, fortunately, it worked out that way just because the investigation was somewhat slow in the sense, so I was always kind of on the verge of a cliffhanger. I also didn't know what was going to happen. I utilized that to my advantage. I don't know that I did anything particularly insightful from a technical perspective. I think I just took advantage of the fact that I was just living in flux for about a year, and I was trying to make the best of it. It is structured that way because it was first produced as a podcast, and I think podcast episodes… I guess that doesn't make sense, because in books, you'd also want to have them captivated to read the next chapter. But it feels especially true for audio, for some reason, in my opinion. Joanna: What other tips would you give for people in terms of writing? You mentioned there the text message into dialogue. Because you've never written a memoir, right? This is your first memoir, but you've written a lot of other books. What are the other things that you've brought from your fiction writing experience? Kory: I had experimented with memoir when I was getting my MFA, because they do want you to play with other genres, and literary fiction I just found difficult for some reason, even though it's not really that much different than the fiction I write, but because I couldn't whip out a superpower for someone, for some reason, it caused a blockage. So I played with memoir instead. And so I had written some memoir-type stories. But you're right, I had never tackled a memoir for publication before. As far as tips about how to do it, I would say, absolutely, be very honest, but that you are also allowed to lie. What I mean by that is, you're allowed to lie in the sense of what I was just saying about the dialogue; if it doesn't work exactly as it said, you can keep the meaning of the conversation, or you can keep the meaning or the significance of what happened, but reword it in a way that is better for the flow of your story, for the cohesion of your story, for the integrity of your story. Also, I had a few little lies in there about people's names. For example, there are some people who are still living, that I didn't want to drag them into such a brazen display of family trauma, if they didn't want to be known for that, so I used different names for them. Be very honest in how you felt what the experience was, but on a technical scale, you are allowed to, I think, change some details, either to improve the story or to protect other people. I think that that's perfectly allowed. I don't think that there's anything disingenuous about that. I would also recommend that you…and this might go back to your question about, how do you write about it without just turning it into therapy on the page, is that when you connect with your feelings, do it from a place of curiosity and acceptance, if you can. For example, I love the Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön. I read a lot of her books. I listened to a lot of her audio tapes. She's helped me a lot with contextualizing my own life. And she talks a lot about this idea of working with difficult emotions from a place of curiosity. There was a exercise that her teacher gave her that was like, ‘Okay, so you're feeling sad, right? Or the emotion you're connecting with right now is sadness. What does sadness feel like in the body? What color would sadness be if sadness was a color, if it was an art style? What art style would sadness be? If it was an actress, what actress would sadness be?' So you start to think about your emotions in a way that it puts you in this position of being curious about them. And so you think about it, you don't just get pounded by the waves of sadness. You're looking at it from this other position, and you're also, at the same time, though, maintaining that intimacy with the emotion. You're not stepping away from it. It's not like you're trying to escape your sadness. You're actually really looking at it. It's like, well, if it was an art style, what art style would it be? If it was a shape, what shape would it be? You get really up close and personal. And then also acceptance, because I think when we have a hard time with emotion, it's because we're struggling against whatever we're experiencing. So it's never really that sadness itself, for example, or grief is the problem. The fact that you're grieving is not a problem. It's the fact that you tell yourself things like, ‘I shouldn't be feeling this way.' Or ‘I shouldn't be grieving,' or ‘I have so much to do. I don't have time for this,' or ‘So and so lost their person, and they didn't completely fall apart, and I must be doing it wrong, or I must be weaker.' It's all the things that we add to our perception of our experience and, in a way, reject it that I think makes it so much harder for ourselves. If you can come at your emotions and your experiences from this place of curiosity and acceptance, I think it would be a lot easier for you personally, just living, but also in crafting your story and bringing to the page what you need to tell the story that you need to tell. My last tip would just be, be incredibly gentle with yourself. And that's with the acceptance. This is not something you need to bulldoze through, necessarily. A lot of indie writers, we're on schedules, like, ‘We have to put out 10 books a year. And if I don't put out 10 books a year, I won't be as successful as X, Y, or Z.' But a memoir or a story like this, that's probably not the time to give yourself a really intense deadline. If it takes you longer to write your memoir, that's okay. It requires a level of emotional and mental commitment that necessarily not all stories do. So don't just ram yourself through this gauntlet of a deadline. I don't think it will make your story any better, nor will it necessarily help you in any way. So take your time and be gentle. Joanna: I think that's right. You often hear fiction writers, ‘I'm going to write that fight scene. It'd be so much fun. I'm going to blow this up and kill that character.' And I haven't heard any memoir writers talk about memoir writing as fun. I think it's very satisfying, and you feel very proud of your work, but I think no one would describe it as fun. Obviously, because of your situation, it was not a fun memoir. Kory: No, I would agree with your assessment. I was satisfied with the job that I had done. I do feel that I told the story the best that I could and that I was very honest, which was what was important to me. Because that was a personal achievement for me, just because the tendency, I think, for people who come out of traumatic backgrounds and who kind of shore themselves up, make themselves tough, is that they're not necessarily good at showing their soft bits, their vulnerabilities. In my fiction, I reread a lot of my fiction lately, and my different experiences, my difficult childhood, it's all there. I can see it now. I thought that I was being really secretive, like nothing was getting on the page. But it's all on the page in any of the books I write. But it was easy to tell stories about someone else like it was someone else's trauma, someone else's difficult experience, not mine. Being open and vulnerable is really hard. Especially if you come from a place where that could really be exploited or dangerous in certain company. It's hard to show those parts of yourself. So you kind of have to really have a level of self-confidence that, ‘I'm going to put this out there.' Even if someone says something horrible to me about it, I still needed to tell the story. And the story was still important. I was proud of myself that I was able to get past sort of these hang-ups that I had about, like, ‘Well, I don't want them to know it was so hard. I want them to think I'm a badass who has no problems in life.' There was a level of reasoning with myself there that took some… It's mental work. It's like you have to really sit down and negotiate with yourself. Joanna: Definitely. I do want to circle back, you used the word ‘lie' earlier, which I think the word ‘lie' is…and the examples you gave, I don't think were lies, they were changing people's names. They were keeping the meaning of a text message into dialogue. But I think this is really interesting with memoir, and I'm not saying that you were lying, but you do write about your mother's history. And your mother is obviously not around to fact check the past. Therefore, how do we research the background of someone we're so personally connected with, but still can't fact check? How were you sure of the things you wrote about your mother's life when you couldn't mine her brain for the information? How do you make sure that is true and the meaning is there? Kory: It's a good question. In truth, even if my mother had been alive, because she was so mentally unwell, she wouldn't have been a good source of factual information anyway. My mother, especially toward the end of her life, she was having memory loss problems, so she wouldn't have been a good source anyway. And that might be the case for a lot of memoir people, like maybe if someone wants to write about their parents who have dementia or something, it might be very true that you don't have a person to fact check you, even the person you're writing about. In my mom's case, because of her schizoaffective disorder, it wouldn't have been helpful for me to check with her. There were two people who are still alive who knew her really well in her past. Both of them had been romantic interests of her. One, they had been married briefly, and another, they had just been together for a really long time when I was a child. And so I did ask them a lot of questions, and I uncovered some pretty shocking secrets about my family. I trust that there is perception, because they did give me information I didn't have, but a way around keeping the integrity of your story, even if you don't have necessarily all the ‘facts,' is focusing on your experience. The story is the investigation of my mother's murder. But it's more about what it was like for me growing up with a mentally ill mother who was struggling with drug addiction. She was diagnosed with manic depression when I was young. Manic depression…now we call it bipolar. But back then, it was manic depression. She would have these episodes. I didn't really understand why she was so sick and what was happening with her and why she would have these complete personality and emotional shifts, like in the blink of an eye. By focusing on what that was like for me, in those moments, I'm still being very honest; there's nothing untrue about what I was talking about these experiences in each moment. But maybe I didn't have the fact of why she was so ill, necessarily. I do feel that I uncovered that now by interviewing the people that knew her in the past. I found some source information. I call it the Detonation Event, the reason why I think that she was so mentally unwell. I was able to get that by investigating people that knew her. By sticking more closely to my experience, I think you're able to remain true and honest, even if you don't have that person, because it's very possible, especially if you were an older person, maybe, and a lot of people have died or the person you're writing about has dementia, maybe you don't have that to check with. I think if you just stick to your experience, you can still tell a very honest story that's very truthful. Joanna: I agree with you. I know that's something difficult, although, to be honest, I can't remember so much about my own life, let alone anyone else's! Kory: Well, I guess we could say that's a good thing about trauma, is that it blazes your experiences onto the retina of your mind. I retained everything. I have kept a lot of journals and stuff. So it had helped. But you've talked about how you write journals, and you go back and you're like, ‘I don't know her. I don't know who she is.' Joanna: Exactly. I find it fascinating that we can read something that we wrote, and we don't feel we are that person anymore. I think that's what gives me pause in terms of trying to think about what another person would have felt or considered when that person is different as well now. I think this is why memoir is so hard, because history is always an ever moving river, and things change and people change. We have to write about different points in time. And, as you say, you have an A story, which is the investigation, and then your B story is your experiences in the past and your mother's history and things like that. So I think it's a deceptively difficult genre to write. I wanted to get into the podcast aspect. You mention that you wrote this as a podcast first. Why write it as a podcast first? And then why change the format into a book? Kory: Another good question. I have talked about and explored trauma adjacently in all of my novels. For example, in my ‘Shadows in the Water' series, the main character, Lou Thorne, she's a sort of vigilante-type character who hunts down and kills this mafia family because they had killed her father, who was a DEA agent. And so she has this traumatic moment that keeps coming back up. If you've ever read…oh, gosh, Donald Maass did ‘Writing the Breakout Novel.' Did you ever do that? Joanna: Yes. Kory: It comes with a workbook. I know you like workbooks. But he talks about high points. And so one of her high points that she revisits a moment that's blasted into her mind is where she's on the back patio talking to her father. He wants to get her some help because she has this ability to travel by water and shadows. But she's terrified of it because she can't control it. So the water and the darkness sort of just swell her up at random, and it's terrifying for her. He's telling her this, and he's trying to comfort her that she'll be okay. And then these bad guys show up, bust into the house. You see the light go off in the bedroom, know the mom's been shot. And then here's the guy pointing the gun at her dad, and he picks her up and throws her into the pool, knowing that it would save her. That's her traumatic experience. Everything that she does going forward is to process that experience. So I understood kind of intimately, from my fiction, that this is what happens. Something happens, and then you do things to process what happens to you. But I had never talked about my trauma, like, ‘Here is Kory, and this is what happened to her.' I was always like, ‘This is what happened to somebody else.' Like, ‘It's not me.' It was always me. But it was like, ‘It's not me, it's someone else.' With the podcast, I felt like, ‘Okay, if it's really going to be me, then I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it with my voice.' It was almost a commitment to fully step into the light to do this. I was like, ‘Okay, I'm going to tell the story with my own voice. You're going to hear my voice say what happened. Everything that happened to me, happened to my mother, happened to my family. It isn't fiction. It isn't fantasy.' I think that the element of using my voice is really important. And the opposite of that being, it's fiction, it's written down, it's about someone else. So it felt like a very strong shift to stepping into this position of, ‘I'm really going to tell my story. And I'm going to tell it like this so that you can hear me.' It would be like telling a friend, almost, like, ‘I'm going to tell you this thing that happened to me. I'm going to share it with you.' I think it added to the intimacy and the honesty of the story, like, telling it with my own voice. Joanna: Yes, and true crime podcasts are one of the most popular genres of podcasts. And so it seems totally horrible to ask you about marketing. Kory: No, I really can separate them in my brain. Don't feel bad. I really am Kory with the publishing hat, Kory with the writing hat. I can do it all. So, absolutely, ask me whatever you want. I'll just put the other Kory away. Joanna: Well, so how has having a podcast of the book…has that helped the book sell? Have you done an audiobook version as well? Because, obviously, there's different platforms for these things. And how has the marketing gone for it? Has having a podcast of the book helped the book sell? Kory: It's interesting, because the book hasn't come out. Well, actually, I think when this interview goes out, it will have just published. I can't say that I've seen anything happen with book sales, because the book doesn't exist in physical form yet, but I did want to release a book because not everyone who listens to podcasts read books. I have a friend, for example, she has no physical time between her nursing school and her two kids in her life to sit down and read a physical book. But she loves stories. So she does podcasts and audiobooks. So I'm thinking of someone like her for the audio-only stuff. And then there are people who they can't imagine listening to stuff. They want to hold a book. So I have a book for them. That's why I have all the different formats. As for marketing them, I really do think it comes down to who you're trying to reach. I have seen the people who listen to my podcast go and buy my fiction, because the fiction does exist at present. And so they read that, and they're like, ‘Oh, this is a really interesting mystery. I like Kory's style. I like how she unfolds it. That's very cliffhangery. It pulls me right through. I blasted through it.' And then they pick up Shadows in the Water, for example, that also has these crime elements. And they're like, ‘Oh, yeah, I can see the same style. I really enjoyed that.' There is some crossover between the memoir and my fiction, which I did not expect, at all, because just getting your readers to go from one genre to another or one series to another is really hard. For example, I just published three sci-fi books, and not everyone's jumping ship from the Shadows to the City books, which are set 500 years in the future in a post-climate-change world, but it's also a mystery. It's a police procedural, essentially, with these two characters. So it's very interesting, the hang-ups that people get about trying different things. I don't know, I guess I understand it, though, also, because you only have so many hours in the day. You need to be very choosy about the entertainment that you use for that. I do find that another marketing tip is that I created a newsletter sequence for the podcast people. So, for example, I had a few extra things that I had shared on my Patreon, some side audio stories that were adjacent to the ones that I had put on the podcast about my mom's story. I put those in a newsletter sequence so when people listen to the podcast, they get the pitch to sign up for my newsletter, and they did do that, and they were interested in that. I'm also putting the autopsy report on there, which sounds macabre, but some people like the mystery aspects and they want to see. They're like, ‘Yes, give me the files, give me the files. Give me the family photos. I want all the details.' I put that up there in case they want to see it, they want more of the information. I did get newsletter signups that way as well, because it was an audio offering, so they were listening to audio, and what they get is audio. They're freebies, which I think was a good choice, as opposed to sometimes when we offer audio, but we're like, ‘Okay, here's a book,' but maybe they don't have time to read a book. Maybe that's the reason why they chose a podcast to listen to, for example, while they're washing the dishes, or the car, or whatever they've got to do with their life. Joanna: I guess the question I have here is, so you did the podcast first, then you took, obviously, the transcript or the words from the podcast that you'd obviously read out, so they were written down anyway. Did you edit that again? And then are you going to turn that into an audiobook as a product? The main difference, obviously, is a podcast is free, and the audiobook, you can sell. And also people listen on different platforms. So you're going to get discoverability on Audible audiobook platforms that you get a different discoverability on podcasts. How will those two products differ between the podcast and the audiobook? Kory: I was on the fence about it. And you just made a really good pitch for why I should put it out. So thank you for making that decision for me. Joanna: Oh, good. Kory: I had been thinking about the things that you just mentioned. You're right, they are different platforms. Someone who is on Audible, for example, aren't necessarily listening to Apple podcasts, or there's not necessarily any overlap in those markets. I have thought about what I would do differently. I would need to rerecord it, because the podcast files that I uploaded, they have all the music and stuff put on. Because I made my own music for the show using this steel tongue drum that my wife had given me as an anniversary gift. So it's got this really haunting, beautiful sound. It's interesting, but I don't know that it would work in an audiobook because they have the silence between the chapters, and you get to upload it, and Audible has to prove it. And maybe they'd be like, ‘What is this weird music here in the beginning of each chapter?' So I would need to redo it. And yes, I did edit it. The whole process was, I wrote the episode, I got in the booth with the episode, realized I couldn't say something while I was recording the episode, rewrote the sentence, and then said it again. That was happening. So there's also edits that were happening as I was recording each episode. And then I edited it again, gave it to my editor, and he edited it for me again, and then it went to the proofreader. So it is slightly different than it would have been as a podcast, and I believe audiobooks, they need to match pretty closely. Joanna: That's only on Amazon and Whispersync. Kory: Yes, Whispersync. Joanna: But I, personally, I don't even bother about that anymore. I just do what I do. Kory: Who cares? We have better things to do with our life. Yes, so I mean, I would need to do that. But I think I would have to rerecord it if I wanted to do it. I do like the idea of having it free, having the audio aspect free. And maybe that would also have some visibility, because you can go to my website, and it's set up as a player. You can just play through the episode. So you don't necessarily have to be on podcasts, for example. There are some people who don't even know how to get on to a podcast app. I've run into that where they're like, ‘I do want to listen to your show, but what do I do?' t was surprising to me that a lot of people still don't know what they are and how to use them. So for someone like that, the player would be useful. Joanna: This is definitely something I think about. For example, I have some short stories, which are on YouTube audio for free. And you can get from my Payhip for free. I also sell them on the various audio apps. I think we do this for ebooks. We give away ebooks for free as a sign up. And we also sell them. So I don't think there's anything wrong in having the same material available for free as a podcast, but also for sale on the audio apps and as a book. We need to put things out there for people in the way that they want to consume them and not just assume that they'd rather have it for free. Kory: That's absolutely true. I was thinking at first not having something behind a paywall was making it more accessible. But you're right, there might be a reason, another accessibility reason why someone needs it in a certain format that I'm not thinking of, so good point. Joanna: Yes, or even just on the platform. I buy audiobooks direct from authors, but I also have the Audible app, and it recommends things in the same way that Amazon always does. And so if it recommends something, then I'll put it on my wish list and discover it that way. I think that's what I'm trying to say is that there are lots of ways that people will discover audio that might not be how you do it. I guess it's good we've had this discussion, because I have also thought about this. I haven't even written my memoir yet, and I'm thinking about this too. Kory: You should absolutely write your memoir. Is it the travel memoir that you've mentioned before? Joanna: Yes, it's going to happen. It's totally going to happen. Kory: Just get in there, feel your feelings, be accepting and curious. I'm sure we will be super excited to read it. Joanna: Right. Well, we could talk about this forever, but we are out of time. Where can people find you and your books online? Kory: The easiest way to find me and all that I do, you could just go to whokilledmymother.com, and that has links to the different kinds of books and series that are right. So everything's on there. Or you could pick up ‘Shadows in the Water' or ‘Dying for a Living,' because they're both free at the moment. So enjoy. Joanna: Right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Kory. That was great. Kory: Thank you so much for having me.The post Who Killed My Mother? Writing And Podcasting True Crime Memoir With Kory Shrum first appeared on The Creative Penn.