The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How does generative AI relate to fair use when it comes to copyright? What are the possibilities for AI licensing? Alicia Wright shares her thoughts on generative AI for authors.

In the intro, Publishing leaders share 9 Bold Predictions for 2025 [BookBub]; OpenAI launches Operator [The Verge]; Bertelsmann (who own Penguin Random House) intends to work with OpenAI to expand and accelerate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the media, services, and education sectors; Death Valley — A Thriller.

Today's show is sponsored by my patrons! Join my community and get access to extra videos on writing craft, author business, AI and behind the scenes info, plus an extra Q&A show a month where I answer Patron questions. It's about the same as a black coffee a month! Join the community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Alicia Wright is an intellectual property lawyer for a technology company, and also writes science fiction and mystery as Alicia Ellis. With two degrees in computer science and an MFA in writing popular fiction, she is expertly placed to comment on AI as it applies to writers.

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

• Using AI as a brainstorming partner and collaborator
• AI as fair use because it creates something transformative
• Using the right prompts to produce quality outputs from AI
• AI is the next technological change in our society
• Licensing your IP for training and AI usage — what to look for in contracts
• Training the AI systems to include your work in generative searches
• Developing your authorial voice and creative confidence
• Uitlizing AI agents in your author business

You can find Alicia at WriterAlicia.com and on social media @WriterAlicia.

Transcript of Interview with Alicia Wright

Joanna: Alicia Wright is an intellectual property lawyer for a technology company, and also writes science fiction and mystery as Alicia Ellis.

With two degrees in computer science and an MFA in writing popular fiction, she is expertly placed to comment on AI as it applies to writers, which we're talking about today. So welcome to the show, Alicia.

Alicia: Thank you so much, Jo. I'm happy to be here.

Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk to you. So first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing, and also into AI and technology.

Alicia: All right. Well, I should say that I got into AI and technology first. I was always one of those science and math people. Math was my favorite subject in school. Not a lot of people say that, but I loved math. I loved the sciences. I always was reading forward in my textbooks.

Then my mother didn't want us watching TV, so we read a lot of books. I got into writing poetry, writing song lyrics, writing short stories, and the creative side of me came out.

It never occurred to me to write something longer—because I was a math/science person—until I got into law school, and there you have to write all the time. You have to write briefs, you know, these 30 page documents.

Then it occurred to me that, hey, I'd like to write a novel. So I would say the technology interest was always there, and the creative interest, the writing, came later.

In my work as a patent attorney, I have encountered AI-related applications throughout the years, even generative AI technologies as far as 10 years back. So I had an interest in that even before it became relevant to the writing industry.

Joanna: So when did you get into writing fiction? How many years have you been writing fiction, as well as doing your incredible job?

Alicia: I have been writing fiction, specifically long form fiction, for as long as I have been a lawyer. The time is almost exact. I know this because I was in my final year of law school and sort of had this crisis. Like, I'm graduating law school, do I want to be a lawyer?

I spent time thinking about that. Just sat down for really a day and went through what I would do if it wasn't law. I decided that I did want to do law, but I also wanted to write novels.

So as soon as I graduated law school, I enrolled in some local writing courses. So I've been practicing law and writing for the same amount of time.

Joanna: Which is approximately?

Alicia: 17 years. I got into indie publishing in maybe 2013, but I've been writing for 17 and a half years.

Joanna: Brilliant. So you mentioned there that you, as a patent attorney, you look at AI applications. You did mention using a bit of generative technology there.

How do you currently use AI tools as part of your creative and business processes?

Alicia: In my business work, well, I see a lot of AI technologies in what I'm writing patent applications for, and that's what I was referring to before.

In managing a patent portfolio at the cybersecurity firm where I work right now, I definitely use AI technologies to help inventors organize their thoughts when they submit to us to do analyses. Sometimes I'm dealing with a huge patent portfolio, and AI can help organize the analyses and my thoughts on that.

In my writing, I use it mostly at the planning stages as a brainstorming partner. I love AI as a brainstorming partner.

I always tell it that it's my junior partner because it tends to go off on its own, and I like to reel it in to run the show, if you will.

I give it my ideas. Often I'll ask it to, say, “Give me five ideas on how to put these things together,” or, “Give me 10 ideas on how to put these things together.” Even if they're bad ideas, it helps me sort of organize my thoughts. Like, why don't I like these ideas?

So, together, we walk through what I want to do. We create a Save the Cat outline. Which I usually start it off once we have all the ideas on the table, I ask it to create the Save the Cat outline.

Usually, I have a lot of changes. We make those changes, and then we'll break it down into a scene list that follows the three act structure.

I often have it generate character sketches and setting sketches — 

because, honestly, I'm no good with thinking about what does this setting look like. What kind of house is this? Bricks? Facade? I don't care. So the AI is really helpful with that.

There's a lot of editing, a lot of back and forth. AI is a great partner for brainstorming and plotting.

When we get into the writing, my authorial voice is really important to me, in part, probably because I have diagnosed OCD. I have experimented with using AI in pretty much every aspect of my process, but for me, personally, the writing part I have to do. I would spend more time editing AI output than I would have just writing it myself.

I tend to use dictation and input the dictation output into ChatGPT to clean it up —

— and they'll catch the dictation error, so I have a much cleaner copy going forward. Then when I'm done writing, I'll use a little AI for developmental editing.

Joanna: I love that. You sound similar to me in the way you're using it. You're using the word ‘partner', your junior partner, your collaborator. You use the word ‘we', which I really like as well because I feel that too.

Like with Claude, I feel this is almost my—not so much co-writer—but like you said, collaborator. It really is a backwards and forwards way of doing it.

I can hear the smile in your voice, and I have a smile in my voice as well, because this is fun, right? This makes it more fun for us.

Alicia: It's so fun, and I feel like my work is better, that this brings out a better side of me. Connections that I hadn't made, problems that I didn't foresee. It's having a partner, so that it's improved. It's not just me, it's me plus some artificial intelligence.

Joanna: Yes. So we could geek out about how amazing it is all day, but I did want to ask you about some of the objections that authors have. You did this great talk at Author Nation, and you were so clear on it.

I don't think there are many people in our community who have degrees in computer science and law, and an MFA, and are an active indie author. I think you're the only person, right?

Alicia: Maybe.

Joanna: Maybe.

Let's start with one of the most common objections from authors, which is, “AI companies stole our work.”

What are your thoughts on this, and how does it relate to fair use?

Alicia: So when I think of the word stolen, I think of an illegal taking. So I think, are we talking about copyright infringement here? I would say, in my opinion, that the work is not stolen.

The reason I phrase it that way, in my opinion, is because I'm sure a lot of folks know, there's ongoing litigation about whether the use of copyrighted works in training data is copyright infringement.

Until those are actually decided, until those cases are actually decided, I can't say definitively, but I feel pretty confident that the training of AI using copyrighted works is fair use.

Fair use is an exception to copyright infringement. Basically it says, yes, we copied copyrighted works, except we did it for a use where this exception is cut out.

Fair use exists in order to allow us to grow from existing copyrighted works, to spur creativity so that you can create based on what already exists.

There's four factors in the US that courts consider for fair use, and one of the key factors is, is your use transformative?

I think that's really important to what fair use is about. Have you created something new? Have you created something that can be used in a different way?

I feel strongly that the use of copyrighted works to train AI is so transformative, and is what fair use is about.

There's case law that's related to using copyrighted works, even for AI in the past, but not for generative AI in the way we're talking about now. I feel that the case law is pushing US courts towards saying that this is fair use. We will see, probably in a couple years, for sure.

I would say that I don't feel like AI is theft. I feel like it will be shown at a later date that AI is not theft, but I can't say 100%. I certainly think that it is premature to say that it is theft.

Joanna: It's interesting. I mean, I would have thought that the US would be further ahead on this. Maybe with your incoming Trump administration, those cases might get settled more quickly.

Here in the UK, our government has literally, like yesterday, come out with the AI plan, and they are almost pushing for an exception around data training in copyright, which is really interesting. We have a very different rule around this.

The argument here with the British government is that these strict things restrain innovation or restrict innovation. As you mentioned, fair use is so we can have more innovation, and we don't want to stifle that.

Alicia: Exactly.

Joanna: Another thing that I hear is that ChatGPT and all of this, they're just “plagiarism machines.”

They can't create anything original. They can only spit out things that come from other people's work. What are your thoughts on that?

Alicia: Calling AI plagiarism, saying that that's all it does, reflects a basic misunderstanding of how AI works at a technical level.

These generative AI models at their core are statistical models.

They've taken in—read, if you will—millions, billions of pieces of writing or images, in the case of the image generators.

Then based on basically statistics—it's much more complex than that, but I'm going to simplify it by saying it's a statistical model—it determines what token—a token could be a word or a symbol, like a period—what token comes after the previous token, and it forms output based on that, one token at a time.

The reason I want to emphasize that it's one token at a time is that you're not lifting even phrases from existing work. It's not at the phrase level. It's at the word level, just like you and I write.

You can't take a combination of words taken from millions of other works and say you plagiarized it because you took a word that was over here and a word that was over there.

It's not a logical reflection of how AI works at the technical level.

Asking, can it only create things that already exist? I would say humans also can only create things that already exist. We all learn from what exists. You're going to see cliche phrases in AI output because, statistically, you'll see words together that you often see together in writing.

So you're going to see things like, “She released the breath that she didn't know she'd been holding,” because you've seen it a lot of other works. In the same way that that's not plagiarism when you write it, it's not plagiarism when the AI writes it, either.

Joanna: I keep hearing people say —

“Oh, this is a crap book. It must have been generated by AI,” —

with the assumption that only bad quality writing can be generated. So given that you and I use this a lot, our prompts are very, very different to somebody who is brand new to generative AI.

Do you think that the quality—and I know quality is a tough word—but—Is the quality of writing from generative AI when you use the right prompts?

Alicia: I think — 

Prompts make a huge difference.

Especially if you're using AI for the writing part, say, for a first draft or for a final draft, however you use it in the actual writing part, I think it's important to prompt it to write like your authorial voice.

The more you do that, I think it's going to be closer to you and may even be better writing, assuming that your author voice is well developed. I think if you just ask the AI—well, I've seen from experience—that if you just ask the AI to write something, it's not necessarily going to be a style that's appropriate for what you're writing.

The more specific you are about how that writing should look, or even give it samples of your writing, describe your own writing, the writing gets better. By better, I mean closer to what you as an author want it to be.

The more specific you are in your prompt, the more you learn how to talk to the AI in a way that it interprets the way you want it to.

Joanna: Yes, I agree. I mean, sometimes my prompts can be like 100 words. With Claude, I'm prompting with whole sentences and beats and all kinds of things that at the beginning of my use I didn't necessarily know how to do.

Again, coming back to the co-writer idea, the collaborator idea, it's like working with another person. You mentioned you're OCD. I'm not OCD, but I'm certainly into control around my writing.

I found it very hard to work with a human co-writer, but I love working with Claude for this reason.

[My use of the AI tools] developed over time. You don't just do it from your first interaction.

Alicia: Right. I 100% agree with that. I've been using AI in my work, in my planning for my writing, and bits and pieces in my actual writing since it first went mainstream the end of 2022.

My prompts are so much longer now than they were then because I've learned how they're going to respond.

Then my prompts for different AI models are different. My prompts for Claude might be different than my prompts for ChatGPT because I have a sense of how they interpret things.

My prompts have gotten more specific, and I chain my prompts together because that's something you learn. It's a skill, using generative AI as a tool.

Joanna: Yes, and that is why I've been harping on about this for so long, because every month that goes past that people don't even try it for little things, they are missing out on time to learn what is essentially, what I think, it kind of underpins the next technological change in our society.

A bit like the internet changed so much, this is going to change so much. Do you feel it's that significant, as well?

Alicia: That is going to change a lot? Absolutely, and there's a lot of change that I look forward to. I'm interested in how the writing industry is going to look when these legal cases are decided. Speculate and say that it's determined that it is okay to train AI models based on copyrighted works.

I'm interested to see how those who are so anti-AI in the writing industry would respond to that. But more than that —

I'm interested in what's coming next. What's going to happen with AI next?

I'm hard of hearing, and I'm really looking forward to outside of the writing industry, some sort of captions. You know, they're making smart glasses. I want smart glasses with captions. I'm just waiting for it. I'm rubbing my hands together. I can't wait. Some of this stuff is going to be life changing.

Joanna: Wow, okay. So you mean you're looking at someone while wearing the smart glasses, and as they speak, you'll see captions of what they're saying?

Alicia: That's the dream.

Joanna: That is amazing, and of course, why wouldn't you have that? That just seems very sensible. So I don't even think that's that far away, surely. Let's hope so.

Well, look, let's come to those court cases. So in the USA, and there are still these open court cases against various AI companies, but there are also now far more companies that have done intellectual property licensing deals for data training, including some publishers and media companies.

Now, as we record this in the middle of January 2025, a company called CreatedByHumans.ai has just launched, and they're partnering with the Authors Guild in the US. The aim is to help authors license their IP for training and AI usage.

Now, this is a non-exclusive thing, and authors can choose how the data is used.

What are your thoughts on the opportunities of this kind of licensing for AI and what should authors keep an eye out for in any contracts?

Alicia: I think the main thing I want to say about this is, if you're being offered a licensing contract for using your work to train AI, that I would jump on that.

It may be that soon courts bring down decisions that this is fair use, and in that case, they can use your work without a license.

So someone's offering you money for it now, I would say, get into those negotiations and think about getting that locked down.

Specifically with respect to terms, I would say, know the scope and the type of model that your work is going to be used for. If it's going to be used for a general purpose that could be used to create competing works, then maybe you want to be paid more than if it's going to be used internally at law firms, for example.

So know what it's going to be used for because that tells you what the value of this license is. I would say, make sure that your terms don't include derivative works, or are very specific about what derivative works are included in what you're giving.

You don't want someone using AI to generate works that are directly based off your work, like sequels. Just make sure that that's something that's out of the scope of the license.

It would exclude anything about sub licenses, unless you're getting paid for a sub license. Ideally, put a term on it, on the licensing of your work, because this area is developing.

You don't know what's going to happen five years from now, 10 years from now. There may be whole new clauses that you want in there because of how technology has developed.

So I would, personally, try to avoid a license that's 20 years or the term of your copyright because you want to be able to develop that license as the technology develops.

I would also limit how your work is going to appear in outputs, meaning the percentage of your work that can appear in outputs.

It is unlikely that with a general purpose chat bot where millions or billions of works are used to train that a significant portion of your work would appear in the output because it wouldn't have that large an input on the statistical model that is the AI model.

However, you don't know how big the model is going to be or how many works are going to be used to train it. So I think it could be worthwhile to have a percentage, say, only 2% of my work at a time can appear in any given outbreak.

That's something that they can program as a layer above a generative AI model, so that it sort of screens that before any output gets put out to a user. So that's something that I would have in there as well.

In general, make sure your contract has remedies, so that if there's a breach, you can cancel the contract, for example. As opposed to just getting paid out, or whatever remedies you prefer, make sure they're outlined in there.

Ideally, you want a right to audit what's happening with your work in the training, so that you can take advantage of those remedies. If you can't see what's going on, then the remedies aren't doing you much good.

Joanna: Those are all really useful things. It's funny because the first thing you said was, get into this because things might change, and we might not get anything if it becomes fair use.

The other thing I thought is we almost have a burning platform on the creation of synthetic data. So I've been looking at the OpenAI's o1 model, and some people are saying that one of the reasons it was created is because it can create really good synthetic data to train the o3 models.

Alicia: Oh, wow.

Joanna: I know. I was like, wow—

If they can do really good synthetic data, they don't even need to take our data.

Although I guess the original sin, as such, may still stand. I don't know. I mean, any thoughts on that?

Alicia: Well, I hadn't heard that about the o1 and the o3 model, but synthetic data, that's something that I'm excited about because I want these models to improve. I want them to use my work to train the models. Synthetic can write more like me, make my job easier.

I'm excited for more training data. I hope that more folks in the writing industry get on board and allow their works to be licensed if allowance is needed. Even if allowance is not needed, I know that folks in the AI industry are feeling the pushback from the writing industry, and it may slow them down.

I don't want them to be slowed down. I want to see this stuff develop.

Joanna: It's interesting that we both want our data in the models. Partly, I also think there's a big change in generative search, in that I mainly use ChatGPT now to do my searches.

So I've been trying to do sort of book discovery, you know, “Give me 10 books that are action adventure thrillers with a female protagonist set in this area.” Then it gives me 10, and I'm like, “Well, what about this book by JF Penn?” I'm like almost trying to train it to think of my books as well.

What do you think about generative search and people using these models for searching?

If we're not there, we just won't be found.

Alicia: If we're not there, they just won't be found. What do you mean by that?

Joanna: Well, as in, the models have access to certain data and certain data that's on the internet. So a lot of the time, it can look at Goodreads, or it can look at Amazon.

I want ChatGPT and Claude to know J.F. Penn, so that if someone is searching for something to read—and a lot of the apps that go on top of things now are powered by these tools—

I want the models to know my writing so that it can promote me or recommend me if people go looking for things like I write.

Alicia: Oh, for sure. I know there are anti-AI folks in the writing industry who don't want AI anywhere near their work. I'm more what you just said. I want AI to be able to find me. I want AI to be able to write more like me.

I believe strongly in my own creativity and my ability to create something that is specifically me, and because of that, I'm not concerned about AI being near my work. I want it to help me.

I'm not scared about how its use is going to impact my marketability because I know what I've got.

Joanna: I love that, and I actually think the same thing.

I wonder if this is creative confidence that comes from—like both of us have been 17 years writing, and previously I was in tech as well. Not quite as deep as you, but I'm confident with tech.

So this kind of creative confidence in our own work and in our own worth that some newer writers might not have, I guess.

Is there anything you can say to newer writers who might not have as much creative confidence as you?

Alicia: This may be strange coming from someone who is very fond of AI, I have a lot of fun with it, but I would say that maybe building that creative confidence means not using AI for a while.

It means discovering who you are as an author, what sort of things you like to write before bringing in a partner, be it AI or a human writer of another sort. Really find your uniqueness and your identity as a writer before you start adding tools into the mix.

Joanna: That is actually a really good point.

You and I have both already done enough books and written enough that we're confident in our voice that we found before AI.

Then I just wonder if maybe people who are younger in the usage of these tools, or people younger in their journey, or just physically younger, are going to do things differently. Like you and I grew up without iPhones, and we grew up without television.

My mum was the same as your mum. We weren't allowed to watch TV until I was about 12. So I feel like maybe people will develop their voice differently now.

Alicia: That's a really good point, and I honestly don't know what that will look like, but I'm excited to see it.

Joanna: Yes, me too. Okay, so let's just circle back on copyright because another sticking point for authors in using these tools is—

They're afraid that they won't have copyright in their finished work if they use AI tools in any way. So where's the line here?

How is it in the US? Because it's different in the UK.

Alicia: Right. In the US, first of all, expression that is generated by artificial intelligence, by a machine, is not copyrightable. However, your authorship is copyrightable. Thus, when you combine your authorship with an AI-generated output, then the part of that that is your creative expression is still copyrightable.

So what that means is, if there's a combination, if you're using AI as a partner, then whatever expression that you contribute to that final product is copyrightable in the US.

Thus, say someone was to copy a chapter of your book that has you in it, as opposed to telling the AI in a short paragraph to write a chapter, if you've been a part of selecting what goes in that chapter, arranging that chapter, editing words that were initially output by the AI, that's all your expression.

One cannot copy that chapter without copying that expression, which is yours.

There's still copyright eligibility when you've used AI, depending on how you use it.

The Copyright Office has confirmed this. This isn't all theoretical here. The Copyright Office has handled some cases.

[Note from Jo — here are some excerpts from the US Copyright Office info, and also the UK, as they differ. Please check your jurisdiction. ]

In the UK, Section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 around authorship and ownership of copyright states:

In the case of a literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work which is computer-generated, the author shall be taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken.

In the US, copyright is all about ‘human authorship,’ and in March 2023, the United States Copyright Office issued guidance around the definition of human authorship in an age of generative AI. They note:

A human may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way that ‘the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.’

Importantly, they also say,

This policy does not mean that technological tools cannot be part of the creative process. Authors have long used such tools to create their works or to recast, transform, or adapt their expressive authorship.

For example, a visual artist who uses Adobe Photoshop to edit an image remains the author of the modified image, and a musical artist may use effects such as guitar pedals when creating a sound recording.

In each case, what matters is the extent to which the human had creative control over the work’s expression and ‘actually formed’ the traditional elements of authorship.

[Back to the interview]

There was a semi-well known case with a graphic novel where the author had generated each image using AI, but the copyright office determined that the arrangement of those images, the selection of those images and arranging them into a story, was copyright protected.

Thus you can't just take that graphic novel and copy it and sell it, because the author's expression is in there. That's the case with cover art as well as written work.

Audiobooks with AI narration are a little different because your copyrighted expression is already in the input, and the output is just your words spoken. So you don't even have to edit that output, it already has your expression in it, and is copyright eligible in the US.

I know in the UK, there are even stronger protections for copyright eligibility of AI-generated works. I think if you direct the creation of it, it's yours.

Joanna: Yes, and I think that's probably why so many people are putting offices here. OpenAI has an office here. I mean, Runway ML, the video generator, they've got an office here, and are partnering with the UK film company. It's essentially like if a machine generates something, it belongs to the person who who directed it.

I was thinking about this, like I like the word director because, increasingly, if you think about a film director—and you know, people will have their favorite movie directors—

Movie directors direct and have a creative vision, but they are not acting every scene. They're not doing all the sets. They're not they're not doing every piece of work in a movie. They are the director.

So I almost wonder if that's the direction we're going is—This much bigger role, where we can do much bigger things, with a lot more help.

Alicia: I think so. I think that there's a lot that we can do with AI to create and expand our creativity besides just writing. We can direct a little movie now ourselves with AI-generated visuals.

However, I also predict, I don't know for sure, that we're going to see copyright eligibility of AI-generated outputs that are unedited in the US. We're going to see some of that become protectable. Right now, that's really shaky ground, except with the exception of audiobooks and the like.

It's really shaky ground, say that an AI-generated image as is, would get any kind of copyright protection. I think we may see that depending on how specific your prompt is, that there may be some copyright protection based on the creativity that you put into that.

Joanna: Yes, I think so. As these models get better and better, you can have a much bigger process. So let's come to that, because we're still in these early days, like we're literally like 2001 in terms of the internet.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, just shared in a new blog post, Reflections, last week,

“We believe that in 2025, we may see the first AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies.”

I'm like, hell yes, give me some agents to do things. I'll do the stuff I love, and my little AI agents will do the rest. I mean the word ‘agent' is difficult in the publishing industry, but think about little bots or little employees doing your work.

What do you think about AI agents, and how might we use whatever they might be in the future?

Alicia: I'd personally love a social media agent because I am no good at keeping up with what's going on my social media accounts. They will go dark for a month and a half, and then I'll remember that I have them and should use them. So I'd love a social media agent.

I kind of have a custom GPT, a prompt set up to help me plan my social media. I've actually tried some products that try to be social media agents that I don't love.

I feel that the writing industry is going to be reluctant to take on these agents. Just based on what I've seen about how protective the writing industry has been—some people in the writing industry—about related industries, like cover artists and voice narrators, how protective they've been wanting writers who want to use AI to hire a cover artist.

They're being very insistent about that, some anti-AI folks. They're being very insistent about hiring a human narrator for your book. I think that we may see that same protectiveness over virtual assistants.

When we're talking about these agents, like a marketing agent or a social media agent, these are things that one might hire a virtual assistant for.

I think we may see some pushback from this same segment of the writing industry that's opposed to using AI-generated cover art.

We're going to see some pushback saying, hey, you should hire a virtual assistant instead.

Joanna: I totally agree, but I think that people are going to use these things anyway. Especially, coming back to creative confidence again, if you are strong in what you want, then actually using these agents.

You mentioned a chain of prompts earlier, and I just have these amazing ideas about how—

I want a chain of agents doing book marketing for me.

There is absolutely no way it would be affordable to have that where humans do it.

Alicia: Absolutely. Yes, affordability is a huge issue. If you weren't going to hire someone, I don't understand the objection to passing along to AI to do it for you so that it gets done, as opposed to not getting done.

I've actually used virtual assistants in the past, and it didn't work so well because I'm so particular. First of all, I felt like a jerk wanting to tweak things all the time. I don't feel like a jerk when I talk to AI. Then it wasn't saving me time because of the amount of time I was spending tweaking things.

So for me, having an AI social media agent would be something that I wouldn't hire someone for anyway. I don't think that's a requirement for using AI, but it expands what we can do, having these agents, having AI in general. I love that.

Joanna: I mean, I think — 

Marketing is probably the biggest thing that people want to use these tools for.

I see that one could almost have an agent per book even, who's responsible for making sure that book gets marketed.

I mean, we've got multiple books, and I find myself marketing whichever one that catches my eye, but there's so much of a backlist I just completely ignore. So I'd really love to have things surfaced from my backlist of work. Also things like having an AI—

I've just started using the ChatGPT Tasks. Have you done that?

They only just started it like yesterday, the ChatGPT Tasks.

Alicia: Tasks? Oh, I have not. I noticed it a couple days ago, and instead, I started using Projects. I recently restarted my ChatGPT Pro or Plus account. I sort of switch which AI I want to use at any given time.

So right now I'm digging into the ChatGPT projects, but digging into the Tasks is definitely on my to-do list. I'm hoping I can get it to remind me of stuff that we've generated that I need to do.

Joanna: So for people listening, this is brand new. It's very, very small, as in you ask it to do a task, and it will do something for you at a certain time. So I've just set my ChatGPT so that —

Every morning it will bring me five headlines across the boundaries of archeology, religion, architecture, and genetic engineering.

Basically, I gave it a list of things I'm interested in writing for my fiction, and then it'll bring me five headlines that I can click through to that will just give me ideas. So every morning, I get this really cool message, and then I go and just have a look. It just helps me think about stuff. So that's my first task, that's what I did.

Alicia: I love that. I'm totally going to steal that.

Since I'm into near future science fiction, I make a point to read technology magazines and subscribe to them, but then I have to actively go to those sources and read them. I love the idea of having them come to me like that. So I've just stolen your idea, Jo.

Joanna: Fantastic. Well, I wanted to mention it because this is an example of something where it will do some work for you and it helps you, but it's certainly not writing your book. So for people listening, please do steal that idea. That is a ChatGPT task. So we are out of time.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Alicia: As we said at the beginning, I write under the name Alicia Ellis. My website is WriterAlicia.com. My social media handle across the board, across everywhere, is @WriterAlicia.

I use Instagram the most, and BlueSky I'm just getting into. Like I said, I go dark for an extended period of time, and then remember that social media exists. So WriterAlicia.com is the main place you can find me.

Joanna: Great. Well, thanks so much for your time, Alicia. That was amazing.

Alicia: Thank you, Jo. I really appreciate you. This has been fun.

The post Fair Use, Copyright, And Licensing. AI And The Author Business With Alicia Wright first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you build a long-term author career with multiple streams of income? How can you use technology for the grunt work and not the fun part of writing? Kevin J Anderson gives his tips.

In the intro, has TikTok gone dark? [AP]; BookVault is expanding printing to Australia; GPSR, the EU’s new General Product Safety Regulation [Self-Publishing Advice]; CreatedByHumans.ai launches in partnership with The Authors Guild for AI data licensing [Publishing Perspectives]; Simon & Schuster launches audio-first imprint featuring content from self-published authors [Publishers Weekly].

Plus, 7 Steps for How to Write Non-Fiction [Reedsy Live replay]; Publishing predictions for 2025 [Draft2Digital’s Self-Publishing Insiders]; Creative and life challenges with me and Orna Ross [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; Death Valley – A Thriller, coming in March!

Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Kevin J. Anderson is the multi-award-winning and internationally bestselling author of over 190 books across different genres, with over 24 million copies in print across 34 languages. He's also the director of publishing at Western Colorado University, as well as a publisher at WordFire Press, an editor and rock album lyricist, and he's co-written Dune books and worked on the recent Dune movies and TV show.

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

• Adapting throughout a 40-year author career
• The importance of having a Plan B when the industry changes
• Incorporating AI into your dictation process — MacWhisper
• Utilizing AI to do the grunt work, not the fun work
• Publishing timeline restrictions with traditional publishers
• Tips for running a Kickstarter in 2025
• Finding a market for short stories
• Meeting reader expectations and delivering on promises

You can find Kevin at WordFire.com and buy his books direct at WordFireShop.com.

Transcript of Interview with Kevin J. Anderson

Joanna: Kevin J. Anderson is the multi-award-winning and internationally bestselling author of over 190 books across different genres, with over 24 million copies in print across 34 languages.

He's also the director of publishing at Western Colorado University, as well as a publisher at WordFire Press, an editor and rock album lyricist, and he's co-written Dune books and worked on the recent Dune movies and TV show. So welcome back to the show, Kevin.

Kevin: It's been too long, Joanna. We should do this more often.

Joanna: Oh, yes. Well, you've got so much going on. So we've gone into your background before, so we're going to jump straight in. This, being in the author business a long time, is incredible. Tell us. You just told me about a big milestone.

Kevin: It was the new year, so I was just kind of doing my year round up and everything, and I realized that my very first professional publication was in January 1985, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. So that means —

40 years I've been a professional author.

Joanna: Wow.

Kevin: So I look back, and it was 1995 when I quit my day job, and I have been a full-time ‘earning all my living by writing stuff' for 30 years. Which, I don't know if I live frugally. No you've met my wife, I don't live frugally. I've just been at it for a long time.

My gosh, it's not like doing the same thing every day, like working on a factory assembly line for 30 years —

This has required just keeping a lookout, and being adaptive, and reinventing myself over and over and over again.

The publishing world does not stay the same, and if you just keep doing the same thing, you'll be left by the wayside.

Joanna: Well, let's just focus on that then.

You mentioned being adaptive and reinventing yourself, but I mean, this really takes a different kind of mindset, I think. I haven't been in it as long as you, but I've seen many authors disappear from the industry, perhaps because they couldn't adapt.

So how do you keep that sort of ever learning process, even when you're already so successful?

Kevin: Well, here's the thing, I am not interested in just one thing or one type of writing.

I've always got like five or six completely unrelated things going at a time.

What happens is that something will be really hot one year, and then nobody wants it the next year, but I've got five other things going, so then we hope something else gets really hot.

If you are only writing steampunk vampire romances, great. They might be super hot this year, but 10 years from now, maybe people don't want to read steampunk vampire romances. I'm just making that up, just as an example.

For instance, let me go back. My big claim to fame, I had my first giant career boost was about 1992. So my first novel was published in 1988, and yes, listeners, I know it sounds like I'm really old, but I'm in good shape.

So 1988, my first novel was published. I published, I think, six or seven novels. This is trad days, there was no option for indie. Then I got a phone call from Lucasfilm saying, “Kevin, would you write Star Wars books for us?”

So, suddenly, instead of just being this author who wrote some books that maybe got some reviews, and you got advances in those days, and I maybe earned $4,000 on a book for working on it for six, eight months.

Then suddenly I was writing Star Wars books, and I was a New York Times bestselling author, and I was selling millions of copies. That was huge for me. So I did all these Star Wars books, and through Star Wars, I did Star Wars comics, and then I learned how to write comics.

That was a huge comics boom, so I was writing monthly comic books and doing all kinds of successful things like that. And because of Star Wars, they asked me to write X Files. I wrote all these movie tie-in books. I wrote the novels for like these science fiction movies that came out.

I was pulling up the drawbridge because people kept throwing books at me as fast as I could write them.

Then around maybe 10 or 11 years later, all of that media tie-in work just dried up.

People might remember, every time a movie came out, you could walk into the grocery store or the airport and there would be a paperback novel of that movie. I mean, that was steady work.

I could pick up the phone saying, “I've got a month free. Give me a movie novelization.” Those things paid like $15,000 or so, and it took three or four weeks’ worth of work, but they just stopped doing that. It wasn't that I gave up on it, or I stopped being good at it or anything, it's just that entire part of the career dried up.

Then I'm not sure exactly the years, but like 2005 or 2006, the entire comic book industry imploded. My comic that used to sell maybe 500,000 copies an issue suddenly sold 50,000 copies an issue, just because people stopped buying comics. That's not anything that's in my control.

There's a whole lot of reasons why authors screw up their own careers.

I mean, we can talk about that for a while, but —

There are so many things that are out of your control so you have to have a Plan B and a Plan C, and as many plans as you have.

I had all these things going, but I kept spinning other plates up. I would write mysteries and horror because then the science fiction dried up. Or I would write young adults with my wife, and then young adults suddenly became hot. I just kept trying all of the above.

You've noticed, in fact, I've given you a cup of my coffee, which is like five times stronger than what you ever would drink. I am fairly energetic, and I like to work all the time, and I keep going.

You can't put all your eggs in one basket because this industry is a roller coaster, and it just changes all the time.

Now, there's a couple of other things. Well, first we mentioned, I'm the director of the Master's Degree Program in Publishing at Western Colorado University, and I started that about seven years ago. In fact, I had to go back to university myself and get an MFA after I had already published 150 books and had 57 bestsellers.

I had to get the degree because you can't teach creative writing unless you have a degree. So I got a master's degree. Now, in fact, we're taking applications for our seventh cohort now. So seven years, I've had this group of students.

I teach them grad-level publishing, both traditional and indie. I put them through the paces. They do their own books, they edit an anthology, they read the slush pile. I mean, it's all hands-on stuff.

The reason I'm mentioning all that, other than telling everybody to check out the program, but that is a completely different plan. Plan Z. I mean teaching at the university and teaching publishing, actually, it pays a monthly salary, which isn't bad.

I get health benefits. You're in the UK, so you don't know how desperate that is over here in the US that you need to have health insurance. So all of that is a completely different track. Like, okay, I'll spend a lot of time teaching graduate students Just try different things.

It's all writing adjacent.

It's not like I'm working as an automobile mechanic in my day job. Everything is related to writing or publishing, but there's different aspects of it.

It's almost like playing Whack-a-Mole. One thing will pop up and be really successful, but then that will go away, and then something else will pop up. You need to make sure you have a lot of moles to pop up in the Whack-a-Mole room.

Joanna: That's fantastic. I mean, it is amazing. Also, yes, I still remember your coffee. I felt fantastic. I haven't been able to replicate that ever since, so I'm going to have to see you in Vegas for more coffee!

Kevin: One more thing I want to throw into that. I was at 20Books and Author Nation, and I was talking to lots of fabulously successful indie authors. They're fabulously successful this year, but they weren't last year.

The attitude that some people get is if they have a really, really good year, it's always going to be that way, and it isn't. So if you have a really, really good year, don't go out and buy a private jet like.

Sock your money away, build a nest egg, pay off your house, or whatever you can do. Build financial stability.

People might remember MC Hammer, the guy who had some really big hits and that didn't have hits, and he spent all of his money. You don't want to be like that. If you're super successful right now, it doesn't mean you will always be super successful.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. I always talk about investing and how I don't expect writing to pay my pension. I'm building a pension to pay my pension, and writing can be extra. [Check out my list of money books here.]

I do want to get into your writing process because, as you mentioned, you're energetic, you're in good shape, and you hike a lot. You dictate as you walk, and you've been on the show before talking about dictation.

Now, I noticed that you have a new edition out of On Being a Dictator with two co-writers, which is a book on dictation.

I wondered how your dictation process works now, and how it's changed with AI tools for speech to text.

Kevin: Well, there's one other cautionary tale I want to throw in there. It's probably been 30, maybe even 40 years, that I've just dictated my writing. That's how my process works. I love just walking and dictating.

You know this, Joanna. It just gets your creative process going, it gets your thoughts going. I love hiking, and I'm outside. I've got myself so trained that I can't sit there and stare at the screen and be very creative. I have to be out walking and moving around. I go hiking and mountain climbing, and everything's wonderful.

A slight problem happened last August as I was climbing down a mountain pass in the rain on the rocks, and the mud was like Vaseline. I slipped and fell, and I broke my ankle. I had to limp a mile back to my car on this rocky trail on a broken ankle, and I was 12 weeks in a boot and then in an ankle brace.

No tears or anything, it healed just fine, but for those 12 weeks, I was unable to do writing the way I wanted to write. I couldn't really walk. I wasn't supposed to move around very much. So I had to just sit on the back porch with my digital recorder and stare off into the distance and dictate.

Man, that cut my productivity in half. It's not the same just sitting there as it is walking. So I guess my downside was that I was so dependent on being able to write while I walk, that when I suddenly couldn't walk for 12 weeks, I didn't have my own Plan B very well in in action.

I mean, I got my book done. I was a little late on it, but it was not as much fun to sit there and write.

So anyway, to your question, the dictation process hasn't really changed. I'm an outliner. I go through and I have my 90 chapters outlined, or whatever, for my big books. I know exactly what happens in chapter one and chapter two. Now, they might change. I might modify the outline, so it's not like I'm completely locked in.

So I'll take my notes for usually two chapters, sometimes three if I go out on a really long hike, and I just get into the zone. I know what's going to happen, and I just tell my story, and I dictate it.

I've gotten it so that if you just play my raw dictation tapes, they're pretty much like an audiobook.

I'm pretty good at being consistent, not stumbling. So that's what I've done all along.

I would take those audio files and I download them, and I had a typing service. So I would upload them to my typing service. They loved working with me because the typing service usually works on like legal documents and medical reports and things like that, which are very boring.

They liked my zombie detective chapters, or they liked my epic fantasy chapters. So they would always fight over my stuff, and I'd get it turned around fairly quickly.

So it wasn't causing much problems. I would get their dictation back in Word files in two days maybe. So it's not really a problem, but it's not cheap. It was like a penny a word to get it done. So 100,000 word book was $1,000.

As of last February, one of my other dictators at Superstars Writing Seminar last February, she was so excited and came up saying, “Oh, you've got to try this AI transcription.”

She showed me how to do it and I played with it a little bit. What I use is called MacWhisper, but there are other transcription things out there.

[Note, Kevin said MacWrite, but he meant MacWhisper]

Suddenly I just feed my audio file into it, and it transcribes it. It takes a little while to teach the damn thing not to rewrite my words—

Joanna: Particularly with fantasy.

Kevin: All I use it for is to transcribe what I wrote, but I've got my AI trained right now, so that it pops out and it does all the drudgery work. So I don't have to put the paragraphs and the quote marks. It's kind of mind boggling to me how well it does.

For a while, you know me well, I'm not an anti-AI person, but I don't want to get people put out of their jobs. So I thought, “But my typing service, then I don't use the typing service. Those people depended on me.”

My friend said, “Kevin, if they're a decent typing service, don't you think they're already using this to do the first cut on your transcriptions?” And I went, “Oh, probably.”

Why should I pay somebody else to run the AI thing that I can just run myself?

I come home, I get my dictation things, I load the files up, I go off and eat lunch, and I come back, and they're transcribed.

It has taken an entire chunk of the pain in the butt, time consuming work that has nothing to do with being creative. It, to me, has made things much more streamlined.

The book I wrote, probably 10 years ago, called On Being a Dictator, because I was really one of the first early adopters of walking and dictating. Everybody's always asking, “Well, how can you do that?” Well, I got tired of answering them, so I wrote it up. Now they have to pay five bucks to get my answer.

Joanna: It is a really useful book. I love the fact that, again, you're being adaptive, and you're changing the bits of the process you don't enjoy, or the drudgery side, or the overly expensive side for what it is, and you've changed that process. Your creative process remains the same.

It's not like the AI has changed your bit of the process, and I think that's really important.

I love that you're adopting these different things.

Kevin: Well, the walking and dictating, that's the fun part. Why would I want AI to do that for me? That's the fun part.

Look, I'm one of these writers that really does enjoy writing. I mean, I love going out and doing my chapter and seeing the adventures unfold.

I have a humorous mystery horror series called Dan Shamble Zombie P. I. and we just did a Kickstarter for Book 11 on it. It's a bunch of dad jokes. It's like the Naked Gun meets the Addams Family. Those stories are so much fun to write, and I find myself like laughing out loud when I go out dictating those things.

My wife will say, “Kevin, you're writing a Dan Shamble book right now because you're always in a good mood.” I love going out and doing that. Why would I want an AI to do all the fun part? AI and computers are supposed to take the grunt work away, not the fun work away.

Joanna: Absolutely. Now, I also wanted to ask you about Kickstarter. So you've done seven, as we record this, Kickstarter projects across various genres.

What part does Kickstarter play in your author business?

What are any of your tips for authors who want to use it in 2025?

Kevin: Well, it has entirely changed how I do things. Remember, I came out through trad, and in trad, you have to convince some other publisher that they should publish this project that I want to do.

That would always involve writing proposals up and trying to convince an editor or publisher that, yes, they should take a chance on this project or that project. Then they would pay you in advance, and that's what I would live on while I wrote the book.

Indie is entirely different. You don't get paid anything until you publish it and you start earning sales and royalties.

Well, Dan Shambles is a good example because I love this series. It was with a traditional publisher, and they did the first four books in the series. Let's just say that we didn't really see eye to eye.

I do my own marketing. As you know, I've been doing this for a long time, and I kind of know what works and what doesn't. So this is a fast and funny series. You read one in a couple of sittings, and then you want the next one.

I'm a fast writer, so they bought the first three books, and I said, “Great, let's bring them out like every six months.” Then they went, “Oh, no, we can't do that. It has to be a year and a half apart.”

Well, but this is a fast series, you don't want a year and a half. So we didn't see eye to eye on that.

So then I wrote a standalone story. Like, here's my original, just an introduction to Dan Shamble. It's a standalone mystery. So I wrote it, and I was going to publish it myself, upload it before the first novel came out. Like, here's an appetizer. You can read this free story and then get interested in the series.

So I wrote it, I was going to publish that. They got all bent out of shape, “No, no, no, we have to publish it.”

So I'm like, “Alright. I don't know that you know anything about ebooks, but okay.” So I gave them the story, but they, of course, couldn't release the story before the book was published. They released the story a year later, before Book Two was published.

This is audio, so you can hear the sound of me slapping my forehead. Then the book comes out as $15 as a trade paperback. It was $15 for an ebook and $15 for the print book. I said, “That's insane. You put the ebook at like $5, or something like that.”

They said, “Well, we don't want to cut into our print sales.” Well, it's apples and oranges. The ebook readers are going to buy the ebook, and the print book readers are going to buy the print book. So they said that their ebook sales were disappointing. Well, duh.

Joanna: That's because they're so expensive!

Kevin: So anyway, after four books of that—and I am going to answer your question about Kickstarters after all this, I promise. So they did four books, and I got the rights back.

I released a short story collection because I'd written a bunch of these other short stories, and that came out, and it did okay, and I reprinted them, and they did okay. But I'm writing Dune novels, and I'm doing these really big projects that, frankly, paid a lot.

My re-issues of the Dan Shamble books were okay, but they weren't huge hits. I really wanted to continue the series, it's just there was no real incentive to do so.

Then my friend Dean Wesley Smith, who's run a lot of Kickstarters, said, “Kevin, you should run a Kickstarter for it.” I had this attitude of, well, Kickstarters are for whiny authors that don't have any money and they're begging for money. He said, no, you got it completely wrong.

He's right. I had it completely wrong.

It's not for whiny authors begging for money. It's a way for you to connect with your fans, to give your real fans a chance to get like a backstage club.

I mean, my Kickstarter people get their books three, four months before anybody else can get them.

They might get expanded editions, or they might get separate things. So, okay, I decided to try it. If anybody wants a new Dan Shamble novel, which I wanted to write, and the fans kept asking for.

So I ran a Kickstarter for another Dan Shamble novel, and bam, it funded in like 30 minutes. It ended up like 15 times what we asked for, and it raised more than triple what the trad publisher was paying. I went, oh, okay, this is pretty nice.

I had another series that I had done, the first book of it was called The Dragon Business. 47 North published it. It was sort of like The Princess Bride meets Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It was a fun fantasy. It did okay, but not great.

47 North is Amazon's print imprint for science fiction and fantasy. Surprise, surprise, brick and mortar bookstores don't want to carry books that are published by Amazon. So the sales for that weren't as great as they expected.

I got the rights back, and I wanted to do a sequel to it because I wanted to build that into a fun fantasy series. So I thought, oh, well, why don't we see if the Kickstarter people want a sequel to that?

Again, I ran a Kickstarter for it, and again, more than triple what the trad publisher was paying. Remember, I'm already an indie author and an indie publisher. So I know how to publish a book. It's not like this is a learning experience for me.

Joanna: Just on that, just to bring you back to Kickstarter for newer authors. I mean, obviously you're talking about established series, so people might think, well, there's already readers for that. What is different about Kickstarter?

Are there things that newer authors who don't have such an extensive career could use it for?

Kevin: Well, actually, it's almost the opposite answer, because this is really designed for people who do have a platform, who do have a fan base, because you can tap into them.

If you're brand new and don't have followers, you have to find some way to get people interested in your project.

Maybe it's connected to a very interesting subject. In fact, one of my grad students right now is a recovering alcoholic, and she's got a whole bunch of self-help books on how to overcome addiction.

She's not famous. Nobody really knows who she is, but she's plugged into this network of people who are trying to help one another through situations like this. So she's able to get attention for that particular subject.

I'm going to run a Kickstarter this spring with my grad students because the poetry concentration director also runs this big Writers Workshop in Montana, I think, which is for indigenous writers, and it's taught by all indigenous instructors.

There are a lot of foundations for the arts supporting them, but they never have enough money to run the workshop. So we're going to run a Kickstarter for them, and we will be tapping into a lot of people to say help support this indigenous workshop.

I haven't run it yet, so we don't know if it's successful, but I'm pretty confident it's going to be. My students are going to help promote it. Now, they're not famous, but when you have this good cause that you're promoting it for, then you can get attention that way.

If you're just, “I'm Bill, brand new indie author. Here's my short story collection. Here's my Kickstarter,” you may be starting too soon for that.

The steps of doing a successful Kickstarter, you have to have a platform and an outreach and some reason for people to want to do it.

Also, you need to be able to convince your backers that you will actually deliver on what you promise.

I've supported probably 50 Kickstarter campaigns, and probably 20 of them I never got the stuff I paid for because they just don't know how to produce it.

So don't let that happen to you. Make sure you know what you're doing.

At 20Books, last year or the year before, I was talking to the head of publishing at Kickstarter. She was kind of rolling her eyes and shaking her head, saying that they've had people that ran campaigns for a fantasy book, and the campaign was successful.

Then the person wrote her and said, “Okay, my campaign was successful. Now, how do I publish a book?”

Joanna: Well, we generally say now—

You should have written your book before you do a campaign.

That's the advice, I think.

Kevin: I mean, even me, everybody knows that I'm going to be reliable. I've written 190 books. If I say I'm going to write one, I'm going to do it. But I feel that you want to deliver your stuff fairly soon, while people remember that they're still waiting for it.

How many people are really still waiting for the next Game of Thrones book? I've given up on that.

Also, so I write my book before—either completely done, or at least the draft is done and I'm editing it—before I run the campaign. I want to be able to turn it over and just deliver the books within a month or two. I always under promise and over deliver.

So right now, I've got the Dan Shamble campaign that ended in the first week of November. I promised them books by March, we are sending them out this week because I got it done faster.

There are times where there are delays, especially if you're doing, say, bespoke editions that have to be shipped from China or something. Those are things you can't count on. I always really want to have everything done and ready.

The other thing is —

I plan maybe two, possibly three Kickstarter campaigns a year.

I don't want to go to my backers and say, “Hey, support my next one,” if I haven't delivered the previous stuff yet. You want to be reliable. Make sure you're not doing it too soon. There are pieces you need to put in place.

Here's an example. So I'm writing Dune books and things. Those go to the trad publisher because they have a much bigger footprint in brick and mortar stores and things. Kickstarter lets me do the projects that are my passion projects, really big things that I want to do that might not fit with trad publishing.

My biggest campaign ever was last year. I've written a lot of short stories over my career, and I thought, well, I just want to collect my short stories.

In fact, I ended up with a whole lot of short stories, like 150 of them or so.

I even found the very first thing that I wrote when I was eight years old. I typed it on my dad's typewriter. It was this little three-page story about a mad scientist making monsters. I found that one, and so I included that in there.

So that meant that by putting the story when I was eight years old, I could do this short story collection that covered 50 years of my career. For each one of those stories, I wrote a little intro of, here's how I wrote this one, or here's how I wrote that one.

So it was three volumes of science fiction, two volumes of fantasy, two volumes of horror/dark fantasy. 750,000 words, all told.

Joanna: Wow.

Kevin: This is a huge job just putting all these stories together. So here's the point, and yes, I do have one, and I eventually get around to it. So I put all these things together, and I went to my New York literary agent. I knew the answer, I just wanted to do it.

So I went to him, and this is the guy who sold million dollar contracts for me, and I said, “I'm going to do a seven volume collection of my reprint short stories, and I want to do them all in hardcover. Who could you sell that to?”

It was like silence on the phone. He said, “Well, nobody. Nobody would want that.

“Nobody publishes short story collections. Nobody buys them. Nobody wants them.” So I said, “Okay, thanks.” I ran a Kickstarter, and we did $80,000.

So, hello, my fans do want it. With the Kickstarter, it's between creator and the reader. There aren't 25 other middlemen between it. There aren't all these other people telling you, no, you can't do it. So it's just a direct me and the readers.

I guess the point of that was, this was a project I wanted to do. Without Kickstarter, I could never, ever have done it.

I mean, it took a lot of time and a lot of work, and it was expensive to do those books. So if I didn't have the money from Kickstarter, I could not have seen that project through.

Joanna: Well, I did want to ask you about short stories. Doing short story collections was one of my reasons that I wanted you to come back on the show.

In the indie space, people think, well, why would I bother writing short stories?

I mean, there are obviously still short story markets, and lots of them, if you focus on that. But many indie authors are like, why would I bother? So, thoughts on short stories?

Kevin: Getting back to the long career retrospective. When I started out, every author's career path was that you wrote a bunch of short stories, you published them in the numerous magazines, and you built up a little bit of a following, and then you graduated to writing novels. Short stories were your training ground.

That's not the case anymore because there just really aren't nearly as many short story markets, and even then, you might not get it published.

The big advantage indies have is —

If you write a short story featuring your series character, well, then you use that as a reader magnet.

You put it in your newsletter, or you use it as, “Get a free story when you sign up for my mailing list,” or something like that.

So short stories have a very good purpose right now, as you use them as like carrots to get people to check out your series. Or you can use it to maybe test out a new character if you want to. Always, short stories are a great way to experiment as a writer.

I mean, it takes me a couple of days to do a short story. So if you think, well, maybe I should try dark fantasy and see how it works. Well, write a short story and see if it works, rather than writing a novel, which is going to take you however long it takes you to write a novel. So it's a training ground, and that's very good to do.

Today, I would look at short stories as an adjunct or as supplementary things, rather than your main focus. They're kind of like the garnish on a plate instead of the steak.

There are many ways to use them. You can swap short stories. With other writers that have newsletters, you give them a story and they give you a story, so then you can get their readers to read your character and maybe pick up your series. That's where I would do it.

The Kevin J. Anderson Short Fiction Library, that came from people who were already interested in my stuff. If you're brand new and you don't have a big following already, I'm not exactly sure that that would be my main focus, doing an original story collection.

Joanna: I will come back on that. One of the reasons I'm thinking of doing this on Kickstarter is because I have bought so many on Kickstarter.

I buy a lot of short story collections from people, I don't know who they are, because I like reading short story collections.

So it's one of those things that when you find a tiny niche of people who are interested in a certain type of product, then there are people there. So that's actually why I was thinking of even doing one on Kickstarter, because I am part of that audience. So I guess it's a different angle.

Kevin: But you do have a following, and you do have a platform.

Joanna: That's true.

Kevin: Now for you, though, one of the interesting enticements might be to do a short story collection paired with one of your writing books. Like my grad students, we assign them your Your Author Business Plan book, and they read it every spring and build their business plan based on your book.

So you might want to do, here's my story collection and here's my—if you have a new book on writing advice or something.

Joanna: Or writing short stories. Yes, absolutely.

Kevin: If you have one on writing short stories, that would be an ideal pairing. Like, here's my short story collection and here's my book on how to write short stories. That's genius. That would work. Brilliant.

Joanna: I think that's what we think around these Kickstarter projects, is it's not like on Amazon where if you pair something and your algorithm goes horribly wrong because those readers don't normally buy that kind of thing. Whereas—

With Kickstarter campaigns, you can put all these things in and it doesn't mess up some algorithm somewhere.

Kevin: Exactly. So, here's the other thing. With doing a Kickstarter and raising money that way, that is completely separate from your indie publishing.

So when I get a Dan Shamble Kickstarter, and those books go out—again, they're going out to all my Kickstarter backers in the next week or two—the official release of this book to the public is like April.

So then we put up preorders on Amazon, and then everybody else buys them.

The Kickstarter effectively gave me my book advance, like I used to get from trad publishers, and then the sales go on sale to the general public because most people don't buy their books through Kickstarter.

It's a special audience.

So most people are going to wait for it to come out on Amazon. So then you basically start all over from scratch. But hey, I just got a whole bunch of extra money up front to do this project. I am clearly a convert, as you can tell.

Joanna: Absolutely. Now, we're almost out of time, but I want to come back to something you said earlier.

You said, “How do authors screw up their own careers?” Then you said, “Well, we could talk about that if you'd like.” So I was thinking that, yes, I would like to talk about that.

How might authors screw up their careers? Or, I guess, how can they avoid that?

Kevin: Well, my biggest piece of advice is, don't be an asshole. Well, first off, I have a policy of I do not make political postings on any of my social media. That is a great way to get rid of half of your readers is to start spouting something.

I wasn't joking, don't be an asshole. Authors talk. Reader's talk. If you're like this total jerk, people are like, I like the books, but I can't stand the person, so I'm not going to buy anymore. So just don't do that.

Deliver your stuff when you say you're gonna deliver it.

If you promised everybody your next book is coming out in April, well, don't make it five years later. I mean, obviously there are extenuating circumstances, you can have a medical issues or some other things.

Prove to be reliable and deliver what you say you're going to deliver.

I like networking, and networking works the opposite way too. If you screw somebody over, everybody else is going to know about it.

In the indie author community, just look at all the people who come to Superstars, or to Author Nation, or 20Books, or these various things. People will know if you stop being ethical and reliable.

I have a policy of I just don't ever talk smack about other authors. I was on a panel once where it was about bestselling books or something, and everybody was just bitching and whining about the Twilight books or about Hugh Howey's books. They didn't like them, or Dan Brown's.

I just went, “Guys, tens of millions of people bought them, so there was something done right. Learn from it rather than complain about it.” I think we're all colleagues. Like, Joanna, you're successful. It doesn't make me any less successful.

I like to read books too. So just because somebody's selling books, doesn't cost me anything. I believe in the rising tide lifts all boats. I like being supportive and helpful, and I do my best not to be an asshole and help other people. It's karma points. It comes back at you.

It also works the opposite way. If you're this very negative person, and you constantly screw things up, you're alienating your readers, you're alienating your fans, you're being a jerk on social media, well, that's a great career suicide.

Just look at some of the actors who have had careers that have instantly crashed and burned because of some stupid thing they did. So don't do the stupid thing.

Joanna: Well, that's really interesting. So you've basically gone for the personality as opposed to the craft, which I think is really interesting. I was kind of expecting you to say they stop writing or they stop marketing, or something like that.

Kevin: Well, obviously if you stop writing. If you do a series—and I joked earlier about Game of Thrones—I mean, there's a contract there. If you started reading this book, you invested lots of time in this series, and I don't know what it is now, 10 years, 12 years since the last one. I'm not waiting for it anymore.

I loved those books. I'm not waiting for it anymore. If you do a series and you're producing them regularly, and you just stop, the reader's attention span is not long because there are so many other things to read. Don't expect them to be like pining by the telephone, waiting for somebody to ask you out on a date.

Readers will move on if you're not producing things.

Now, again, we get back to the longevity of a career. It is exhausting to write lots of books a year, and most people can't keep doing that for 20 years or 30 years.

That's one of the reasons, especially indie authors, where readers expect you to write several books a year. Some indie authors I know are writing a book a month. I couldn't do that for any long period. Well, I couldn't do that probably for a single year.

You start building expectations, and when you fail to meet those expectations, they will leave you very quickly. That's why you should have Plan Bs.

If you really, really can't stand writing your steampunk vampire romance series after book number 29, well, make sure that you have some other series you're starting and building up.

Well, Hugh Howey's got several series that are going. Michael Anderle has all kinds of series, and Craig Martelle has all kinds of series. You don't just put all your eggs in one basket. You need to have Plan B and Plan C, to circle around to what I started with.

Joanna: Well, that is fantastic.

Where can authors find you, and your books, and everything you do online?

Kevin: My website is WordFire.com. My store WordFireShop.com. After COVID, I realized I needed to sell books direct, and that's doing very well for me. Facebook, just look up my name, Kevin J. Anderson. I've got a couple of different pages, and you'll find it.

Also on WordFire.com, there's a whole section about the graduate program in publishing, if anybody's interested in becoming a Master of Publishing with the piece of paper to prove it.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Kevin. That was great.

Kevin: Thanks, Joanna. I always love talking to you.

The post Building A Long Term Author Business, Dictation, Kickstarter, and Short Story Collections With Kevin J Anderson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you balance creativity with business in order to have a profitable, long-term author career? What were the successes and challenges of the Author Nation conference? Joe Solari shares his perspective.

In the intro, the money episode [Ink In Your Veins]; WISE for multi-currency banking; creative planning tips for 2025 [Self~Publishing Advice]; Surprising Trends Authors Can’t Ignore in 2025 [Novel Marketing Podcast]. Plus, an update on Death Valley, A Thriller, and reflections on seeing live theatre vs online & stream/subscription models.

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Joe Solari helps authors build great businesses through books, courses, and podcasting, as well as strategy and operations consulting. He's also the managing director of Author Nation, the biggest conference for indie authors in the world.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Maintaining sustainable balance between writing and marketing
• Creating an author business that fulfills you
• Utilizing your time effectively in 2025
• Navigating social media and business goals
• Learning to say no and focusing on what you really want
• Author Nation 2024 Highlights
• The logisitics of running an author conference
• Catering to different experience levels at an author conference

You can find Joe at JoeSolari.com and AuthorNation.live.

Transcript of Interview with Joe Solari

Joanna: Joe Solari helps authors build great businesses through books, courses, and podcasting, as well as strategy and operations consulting. He's also the managing director of Author Nation, the biggest conference for indie authors in the world. So welcome back to the show, Joe.

Joe: Thanks for having me on again. I really enjoy the time we get to spend together. It seems like we talk more on the show than we do at events that we meet each other at.

Joanna: Absolutely. Well, we're often both very busy. You've been on the show a couple of times before—and I'll link to those in the show notes—so we're just going to jump in today.

Now, as we head into 2025, authors are assessing their priorities for the year. Now, in your experience helping authors build profitable businesses—

How can we balance writing and marketing so that both are sustainable?

Joe: That's such an awesome question. I think a lot of folks that are used to hearing me on your podcast or other podcasts are going to think that I'm going to go right into talking about profitability or budgeting, but I'm going to actually get a little different approach for you on this whole thing.

Let me give you some context first, and that is—

Where do you have your best ideas?

Joanna: Personally, a lot of my ideas come from traveling and places, in particular. So I have to go and visit things and input in order to have ideas.

Joe: Yes, and that doesn't surprise me. I've asked the question of a lot of creatives, and what I've discovered in asking that question is there tends to be two different things that come up. Like, it's when I do something like go on walks. Or a lot of times it's things like driving or a shower.

Why that is, there's science behind this, and it's you have two distinct networks in your brain that you need to use for creativity.

One is the default mode network. That's what your body goes into when you daydream. It's when you were sitting in class and getting bored by your teacher, and it would make you go off and think into your imaginary world. That's a natural place for you to go.

The other system is your executive functioning system, which is what helps you focus and get words out and hit deadlines.

They're two distinct systems that sometimes will overlap, like in a venn diagram. When that happens, that's your flow state where you feel like the ideas are coming and you're getting them down on paper.

The interesting thing about that is that it’s completely counter to what you're told to do as an entrepreneur and hustle culture. You're just supposed to produce. You're supposed to produce words. You're supposed to sit in a chair. You're supposed to produce.

So what you do is, when you are only focused on that one side, the executive function side, you detach yourself and you distance yourself from your creative well.

So my answer to your question is that — I suggest that authors start to build into their process in 2025 more time to tap into that default mode network and spend time thinking about how they can spend some real quality time and —

Protect that creative space, because that's where all your good ideas come from.

When you feel like you're being blocked, it's because you're disconnecting yourself from that default mode network. So it's sound business advice, in the sense of there's this process that's core to your business that we need to get more efficient and think about how we can improve its performance.

Joanna: I really like that, and I feel like this is something I've always done is that I separate my time into creative time and business and marketing time. I find like I can't do both in the same time period.

When I had a day job, first thing in the morning—you know, I'm a morning person—so I'd write before going to work. Then in the evening, I could do business and marketing. This podcast was started after my work, back in the day.

So perhaps that fits into what you're saying is that you have to schedule different types of time, some for input and creativity and thinking and not doing much sometimes. Then other time for business and marketing.

I feel like maybe authors sometimes try to do everything all at once, and maybe that's why it doesn't work.

Joe: Absolutely, you're really getting into the core of this.

There are different systems, and they have to be honored in different ways, and you need them both. We're on The Creative Penn show, come on, we have got to talk about creativity. It's like, we forget that's the source of the product.

We get very focused on, oh, it's a business. You have this product you have to put out. You have these customers you need to serve. All that stuff, it has to be done, but what you asked was —

How do we make this sustainable process between the marketing and the writing?

What I'm getting at is there's some things that we can do to make that process easier. What it means is understanding that this isn't up and to the right like a business chart of sales. It's an undulating cycle.

Let me give you another context for this. If we look at creativity as a profession, you have this natural talent as a creator. We've identified that you've got this active imagination, and you love to spend time in the story world, and it's fulfilling to you. That's no different than if we noticed some natural athletic talent.

So what would we do around that if we saw that you were a really good tennis player? Well, we would work on your endurance and your speed. We would work on racket skills. We would work on all these different things to supplement that natural talent.

One of the big things we would also do for an athlete is we would have a recovery cycle.

We wouldn't just say after you finished winning Wimbledon to go play the French Open. We'd put you in an ice bath, we'd stretch you out, we'd go into some kind of a process that would get you to be ready for the next time you play.

I think that goes, again, back to that first question of yours, what could you do to make 2025 better? It's like, how do you build a recovery process?

How do you give yourself that space to let the well refill?

There's a lot of things right now in the world that are really, really detrimental to you refilling the well. We're talking about this really powerful default mode network and that time where you just need to be bored to let it kick in.

What do we do? Well, we get on social media, and we doom scroll, and we do a bunch of stuff to fill in that time that really deteriorates. It does two things, right.

You lose that time that you need, and it deteriorates your capacity because you're doing really horrible things to your neuro-chemical system with these dopamine hits from scrolling.

I've been doing this research, and it's kind of scary to see what could potentially happen with this. It's destroying all this creative capacity out there that we need to have new ideas come up, whether it's a new story or the cure for some disease.

Joanna: Yes, it is tough. In fact, one of the things I do is try to be active in my open time. So you said there be bored, and being bored is really hard, as you say. So I go for a walk often, and going for a walk means I can't look at my phone while I'm out walking. I'm looking at nature.

You mentioned the shower. We cannot stay in the shower for hours at a time, but I can walk for hours at a time. Most people, wherever they are, there should be somewhere you can go and walk.

Although, perhaps not at a gym. I don't know, a gym is also very stimulating in terms of the screens. Particularly in your American gyms, there are so many screens everywhere.

This is also really hard for people, and I know there will be people saying, “but social media is how I”—not me particularly—”but how I might be selling books.”

So this is the hard part, right? This is what it comes down to. I love what you're saying, but then people are like—

“But I have to be on social media because how else do I meet my business goals?”

So let's talk about that, about the business side as well.

Joe: So again, you have to put it into context. So let's use this perfect example of a bunch of folks out there that are listening that are seeing really amazing success with their strategies on TikTok. So they're going to say what you just said, “I have to be on this platform.”

It's like, yes, you do, but how are you on the platform? Are you on this platform to develop meaningful relationships with your audience? Because also this thing is about, how do you make your business fulfill you?

If it's just about hitting business goals, that gets you on that hedonic treadmill where you always have to be hitting goals to feel like something's happening. Versus like, no, I'm really trying to help an audience connect with work that's meaningful to me and will be meaningful to them.

So in that process, I need to carve out some specific time to be on TikTok, and I need to do these specific things on TikTok. That's all executive functioning kind of stuff.

Now, they may be like, “Well, I need to come up with some creative stuff for TikTok.” Well, maybe you need to spend some time in that default network space to think of those ideas.

Just sitting for an hour and a half scrolling on TikTok instead of being on a walk or doing something that gets you into that space, is going to hurt your business, not help your business. So I think that —

You have to really think through those compartments of social media and where it makes sense.

Then you get into the whole other side of how social media can make us get into comparison and all kinds of other horrible things. We could talk about that for hours.

Joanna: Yes, and it's interesting because we also do have to make decisions about time. You mentioned time, and we only have limited time. You and I are older now, and time gets more and more limited, unfortunately.

When TikTok blew up, and I've looked at it several times, and every time I go, “I choose not to do this because my time doing other things is more valuable.” Like I'm doing calisthenics and practicing doing handstands. At this point in my life, practicing doing handstands is more important than TikTok!

Other people make a different decision, but I think it's very interesting. So this is one thing is we have limited time, and we have to make a choice over the time. Also, we do have to schedule downtime.

What are some of the mistakes that you see authors making?

Again, back on the profitable or for business, but also the fulfillment that you mentioned?

Joe: So I think that—and again, this plays off of what you just said—is we think that we have to do it all.

Whatever comes into our feed or starts to trend with whatever place where we're getting information, it's like, “Oh, I have to do this thing now. Like, I have to do TikTok. It's obvious that I've got to do TikTok because I see these people that are making all this money at this.”

To your point, you chose to do something different. I think this is —

One of the hardest things in any business is saying no.

The reality is, if you look at something like venture capital or private equity, they're in the business of saying no.

They have a process that they evaluate what they're going to invest in and what they're going to do because they know they have a finite amount of time and capital. If they don't say no to 99% of the things that come over the transom to them, they're just going to run out of money and have bad investments.

So they have to have a system where they evaluate what is the best use of time and money. The reality is that for authors, that time component is the real finite resource.

There's so many authors that have figured out how to get a business ramped up and make money with no money. Like this is the land of bootstrapping, right? Whereas a lot of other businesses, you can't even get into the business unless you have capital.

So here's one where people have figured out ways to do that, but if you're not looking at the best use of your time. What we talked about earlier is now we're saying you need to think about a chunk of that time in a different space that isn't necessarily doing businessy stuff. That means you have less time, right?

How do we best use that time in 2025?

I think that you're better to pick one or two things and really invest and do them well than try to do 10 things halfheartedly.

Joanna: So how do people pick one or two things?

I remember this, back in 2009 when I started this podcast, I'd never done a podcast before. It was very, very new, actually, in podcasting era. I was like, I'm just going to try this. At the same time, I started a YouTube channel, again, quite early on in that time.

Although I still have a YouTube channel, it didn't become the thing that I enjoyed, or that actually is part of a profitable part of my business, but I didn't know that before I started.

So if people listening, they're like, okay, well, should I try TikTok? Or should I do Facebook ads? Or should I use a subscription service? How do they know, or—

How do authors pick the one or two things that might work for them and might help make their author business profitable?

Joe: Again, this is where you have to kind of step back and ask yourself these questions. What is my natural curiosity leading me to? When do I feel that it's being fulfilled? So we can just use your examples.

Of course, you're going to want to try these things as they come up. You're going to see, oh, this is a new thing, but what is it that I want to get out of it? So from a personal standpoint, am I feeling energy come to me?

Am I getting something out of it? Or is it feeling like it's draining me? You have to honor that.

Number two is, how does it align with your business practices? When you step into something like TikTok, there's the how-to. There's courses. There's all kinds of people that have talked on shows like mine about how to do this, but is that the audience you're looking for. Is that the kind of interaction you want to have with your audience?

Using you as an example, you've been very deliberate and said no in instances that probably have pissed some people off. It's because you understand that in the long run, it's not going to work out well for anybody because you're not going to be getting fulfilled. Is that a fair statement?

Joanna: Oh, yes, but I also annoy myself sometimes. I'm like, why can't I do video? As you say, curiosity, and also what drains you. Video drains me, and it always has. Some people say, oh, it's because you're getting older. I'm like, no, it always, always has.

Also, I don't listen to music. I don't do noise. I like silence. I like quiet. I think, as you say—

We have to tap into these things and learn to say no, otherwise you can burn out.

Joe: I think when we go back to thinking about where your creative well gets filled is that them going to a coffee shop is a place of creativity. I go there and I'm eavesdropping on people's conversations, and thinking about the coffee, like it's not a place where I can do that.

So part of this idea is for you, as a listener on the show, thinking about these ideas, what is it for you? Not, what is the community saying?

There's no shortage of ideas on ways to make money as an author or to monetize your creativity, and there'll be more coming.

There's going to be a bazillion new ideas that come with innovation, you're not going to be able to do them all.

You need to be really deliberate and pick the ones that do two things, in my view, and that is to connect you with the audience that you want to connect with. Because, again, if this is about making money, you need to have people that see that your creative content is worth more than the cold, hard cash in their wallet.

Then two, it fulfills you, and fulfills you in the right way.

Okay, what do I mean by that? Not that it makes you get your ego pumped up or gives you a bunch of status in fake things like rank, but that it fulfills you by like, “I am now truly in touch with my meaning.”

It helps you understand why you're on this planet. This helps you to feel like a full human being. That's the part that I think is getting lost in this whole hustle culture, is that you're going to feel good when you hit this particular monumental thing like making seven figures. No, you won't. You won't.

I know this because I've worked with so many people that have done that, and they come to me and they're like, “I've worked harder. I'm more burnt out. I have the mantle. I won the trophy. I sold a million dollars’ worth of books this year. But you know what? I can't keep this up.”

What ends up happening is —

The ones that are successful going forward find themselves in a place where they end up becoming most likely more profitable, selling less books, but doing something they love.

They find that sweet spot because they've changed their focus.

They've gotten to be like, “Hey, wait a minute. If I do some things with my business, tune some things up here, I can make more money than I've ever made before. I can feel good and I can tap into things that I was missing out.”

“I can connect with my family more. I can travel more. I can feel that I can leave certain parts of my business and not think that it's all going to crash into a heap.”

Joanna: Yes, exactly. That's why we were emphasizing ‘profitable.' I know you talk about this a lot because a lot of the numbers that you can see, screenshots on various social media or whatever, are the above-the-line figures. They're not necessarily the profit figures. They're the income or the revenue, but not the profit.

So that's where we like to focus. Profitable life, I think in general, just having a happier life.

I want us to get into Author Nation now. 2024 was the first year, and I was there. It was fantastic. I bought my ticket for 2025 before I even left Vegas. So I was one of those that as you were talking about it, I went on and bought it. Let's just, first of all, from your perspective—

What went well about the Author Nation conference?

From, I guess, you and from Suze and the team, but also from feedback that you got.

Joe: Oh, well, I don't even know where to start. There's so much. I think the funny thing was, so many people were like, “Oh, you have to be really stressed out. There's got to be a lot of stuff going on.” The feeling was more like being the host of a party or your wedding.

Like you have this big event that you've planned, you want to make sure everyone's having a good time, but it wasn't like there were fires to really put out.

We had been working on this thing for over a year. We have a team that really did an amazing job at putting together the programming and building a system like that. Like people don't understand this is where my creativity really was able to come out and take a business and work on it.

The show as a whole was surprising to people at the things that we focused in on. Like, we spent a lot of time with the space. We made sure that the space was open and inviting. We had rented a bunch of furniture, couches and stuff, so people had these conversation pits to hang out in.

That came out of observing other shows that tended to, in my view, make authors feel anxious and confined and claustrophobic. So we didn't want that to be the case.

We wanted to make sure that there was different facets for authors. So the folks that were really there to kind of fill their well with information, we had a lot of great sessions. Yours was a great example of that.

We also know that there's a lot of people that they never go into those sessions. They just need a place to hang out, and do deals, and talk, and network. So we had different spaces for that. We had, like I said, these conversation pits. We also had a bunch of tables around where people could sit and work together.

All of that stuff was designed to hit the needs that we kept hearing people say when we asked them about what they want out of a show. Now, the feedback we've gotten, that's the other thing—we built a system so we were able to collect reviews off of every single session and about the overall show.

So we ended up with 866 reviews of sessions. We reviewed on two things: were the objectives clear and where the objectives met? We had, on the first one, it was like a 4.6 out of 5, and the objectives met was like a 4.55.

So we had a really, really good feedback system, and we had good feedback. The great thing was, is we then—like, I'm sure you were sent your reviews.

Joanna: Yes, that was great. Yes, really good.

Joe: So it's funny, when we did that, there was some people that, again, we can all be self-conscious. It's like, no, those aren't bad reviews. You got to filter out some of this stuff.

Joanna: Yes, for sure. Actually, this would be a tip for people if they are coming, if you're using that app again, I didn't make the most of that app until towards the end of the week. Then I realized that there were slides on there from people's talks.

If you missed a talk, you could go get the slides, and you could sync it with your laptop —

and all of that kind of thing, as well as doing the ratings. So, yes, that app, I think next time I'll be using that. Are you going to use that same app again?

Joe: Yes, we're going to use that again. I actually had somebody come up at the show that's a programmer, and he talked about programming something specific for us. So we're going to look at that as a potential, but the idea is having something like that.

We were really happy with the tool we used. The only thing we were hoping to add into that was better group communication, so a way for authors that are there to have a single platform to network between themselves and message each other. So that's the one thing that we're trying to figure out.

All those pieces, we spent a lot of time on. If you noticed, we have a numbering system that tells you what room something is in, what day it is, what session during the day.

That all feeds back into our system because this year what we're really working on is all the stuff that was kind of manual processes that we hand carried through the building. It's like we're automating all that stuff. We're using agents and tools that are now available to us.

So you'll see this, for folks that are submitting to speak, that starts you in a process that will eventually feed all the information into the contract we send you. Then that'll push information into our system so that our folks don't have to be typing stuff in.

Joanna: That is good. I actually did submit mine—because I knew we were talking—I was like, right, I'm going to submit my talk. So I did actually go through that process, and I noticed it was very organized, and there were all the things I could put in. So that was that was super useful.

On that, I guess you mentioned there the automations and agents and AI. There was a lot of AI sessions at Author Nation 2024. There was also a lot on direct sales. There was lots on Kickstarter and people selling on Shopify. These are some big trends that are coming or are here.

What are your thoughts on some of these big, overarching trends, like AI and direct sales?

Will you continue to cover them in the show in 2025?

Joe: I think we probably had the single most comprehensive track on AI that anyone's ever put together in the creative community, while at the same time having a massive amount of information on how to be an artisan.

So the idea for us isn't to be one thing to everyone, other than the place you come to get exposed to everything.

The idea that there's one way to do this is ludicrous. This kind of gets to some of the stuff you and I have talked about—how we do things today is very different than how we've done things in the past.

As a human being, if you're going to be an author for 30 years, you're going to change.

You're going to make decisions. Hopefully, you're getting to a point where you're saying there's some stuff I'm not going to do.

I think one of the best examples of all of bringing that change is we had Johnny Truant at the show, one of the co-authors of Write. Publish. Repeat.

Here is like the OG of like fast publishing doing a session on being an artisan and how his focus is now on creating meaningful relationships around his work with a small, intimate group of fans that can support him.

There's two parts of that. One is like, how does he do that? But also that bigger message of like, yes, I've matured and changed what I think is important for me to be fulfilled. So that's what we want the show to be about.

The hard part can be is if you're newer and you come in, it's like, oh my god, there's too much stuff on the buffet. That's our responsibility to try to help people manage and absorb this content.

Joanna: Yes, and on that, you have tracks, don't you, for people who haven't written a book yet. For different genres, for people like me who want the much more advanced content, but—

There's stuff for people who haven't even written a book yet, as well.

Joe: Yes, it's so that if you've never written a book, you can come.

Frankly, if you haven't written a book, you're in that part of your publishing career, there isn't a better thing to do. Why is that? Well, there's more people on the planet in that one room for that five days that have done what you want to do than anywhere else.

So why not be there and ask them questions, and learn from them, and see what is their way of doing it. Because in the beginning, you just need to get that book out. Then you can start understanding some deeper things about what your business will look like.

You and I are a long way away from that first published book, but that was a massive endeavor. We forget about that sometimes of what a massive endeavor that first book is.

So once that does happen, then it's like, oh, well, that wasn't that bad. I can do that again. Now, how do I want to do that? How do I want to connect with people? There's so many different ways now, that's the other thing. It used to be, oh, well, you just have to get on Amazon.

Well, no, maybe for you, the best thing because of your writing style and the way you work is that you're building your business on Kickstarter. So we'll have people there, like we have the Kickstarter people, right?

Joanna: Yes, Oriana.

Joe: What we're doing is, now that we've gotten the first one under our belt, we're going out to folks. I had a conversation with Oriana just before the New Year for next year. Like, okay, what if in our online community, you come in and coach a cohort of people to do Kickstarters?

So instead of having a session at Author Nation that is educational, “hey, you should do Kickstarters,” you have a session where you meet with those people and talk about what worked and didn't work in those Kickstarters that you ran over the year.

That's a whole different way that we use the idea of community and a week-long show to get the support mechanism that people really need.

Sure, we can run a great show and take out our firehose and just drowned you in ideas, but — 

What happens afterwards to help you implement those ideas?

The first part is what we're talking about, picking the ones to implement.

Joanna: Very important.

Joe: Sitting in front of a notebook with 60 great ideas can be paralyzing. So how do we get you to the ones that are going to have the—and it's something we talked about at the show—high impact, low effort.

Joanna: Yes, and I think —

One of my tips for people is to plan in advance.

So even though it's not up there yet, towards November the schedule will be around. So people can kind of see, all right, well, what do I really want to go to?

What I had in my schedule, which I planned ages in advance because I was arranging meetings and all of that kind of thing was, this is a session I have to attend, and then there might be other sessions I'm like, that will get a two, and if I'm around, I'll go to that, and if not, I'll figure it out later.

So really, planning in advance. Then, as you say, afterwards, like reviewing your list at least a week later and seeing what still resonates from what you went through.

There might be a ton of stuff you wrote down that a week later you're not so enamored with. So I think that's really useful, is putting the extra time in to do the scheduling and then do the thinking later.

Joe: Yes, and there's two things that I want to touch on that.

The first is, is one of the areas where we recognize that we can do a better job, and that is when there were lower reviews on sessions, the trend seemed to be that we didn't do a really good job at helping the audience understand that topic.

The way we did our reviews is we also asked what level you were in as an author. Then what we would see is these stratifications where it's like, oh, look at all the high reviews from these people that were beginners, and all these low reviews from people that were advanced.

We screwed up and we made this thing seem like it was for everybody. So one of the things that Chelle and I were talking about is that if you want to get your session approved, you're going to have a higher chance of doing that saying, “This is for this specific group,” than saying, “Oh no, this is for everybody.”

We really want to make sure that we're identifying the right experience level to make that work.

The second thing is, if you went to the show and you were a maniac and went to a session every time there was a session open, the best you could have seen was about 23% of the content that we put together. So I mean 70% of the sessions you miss.

Now, let's put a little math on that. You're probably not going to look at all those because of, again, what level you are. So let's say you missed half of what you should have seen. Well, that's why we're doing this whole thing about the after party that starts the 11th.

It is this idea of like, hey, we're going to have all these videos in an area. You can watch the videos that you didn't see. There's a spot where you can go and put in questions. We're going to submit those questions to the presenters, and then we're going to have hour-long Q&A sessions on Zoom to get those questions answered.

So you get a couple things out of this that never has happened at a show before. One is — 

We can pull this virtual and live community together so we can make a more cohesive author community.

Two is, you get a way to get more value out of those sessions that you missed.

Three is, even with a session you went to, you now had time to digest it and look at your notes and think through some things on your business without being at a crazy show with all your friends.

So you may have some more questions that you want to get clarified with the speaker, and now you can get on there and say, “Hey, now I'm looking at my business. What about this or that?” And they'll be able to give you really good feedback that's pertinent to your business.

So we're really trying to think how this is a community of communities that gets results.

Joanna: Now, we do have to say that there are inevitable challenges with every business, and in fact, one of the challenges was my session, the recording didn't work. So I am actually redoing my session as part of this after party.

I'm actually going to give the session again with some updates because, of course, my talk was on AI, and it was in November, and we're two months on, and things have changed. So I'm going to be doing that again. So, yes, the challenge is sometimes things don't work.

What were some of the other things that were challenges or that you're changing and improving?

You've talked about some of them, but anything else?

Joe: So on that particular subject, out of 160 sessions, I think there were eight that we had technical issues with. So like, we want to have zero fault on that, but fortunately, we've got a solution. In your case, you don't have to record video. You just show your slides. I know this is not a thrill for you!

Joanna: No, definitely not a thrill, but I'm happy to update the slides and do it again. Like you said, you're doing the after party, so it might actually work really well.

Joe: Yes, the point is having this situation where we can interact around that material. Frankly, we have to get that session done because you were one of the highest rated sessions there were.

I think we had a fundamental difference in how AI was seen at the show, and why was that was how we were approaching the subject matter. This wasn't about how it is just used in creation of content, we were talking about all kinds of stuff.

The good and the bad of it, and as well as how this is going to be able to do things for you and your business that you don't want to do, or frankly, you're not that good at, and the machine is going to be better at it than you. So that's part of it.

Your question was about what could we do better. We have the reader event, and we're always going to struggle with that until we get to the point where we can do that on a full weekend. We know that having a Saturday for that means we get a lot more people to show up.

We rolled out some technology at that event. It was the first time it was ever used. It went pretty well, but we've got a whole list of stuff we have to improve with that. We wouldn't have had that list unless we went and did that project, right?

So the idea of us creating a way for us to sell print books at a show, and authors not have to figure out how to get the books there. We've got the first part of that solution. The readers could order books, we had them printed on demand and delivered to the show.

Now that we have that system working, and we know that it works, we need to get it so that it's a really pleasant experience for everybody. So those kind of things are marginal things that we need to adjust to make things better.

Again, this is stuff I enjoy.

Now that I can see where we need to improve things, then we'll figure out how to improve them.

Joanna: It's only year one!

Joe: I think that that was for us, this first year was a lot about like, okay, I've never run a show before. It's the first time I've done this.

There were people on our team that were involved with the previous show and knew what to do at the show, but we were making so many changes that there was a lot of moving parts that were new and had to be watched.

The beauty of something like this is to see the impact that it has on the community, while at the same time being able to work with people on making it happen.

So it's very fulfilling for me because this is how my creativity comes out in working on a business. It's even more rewarding because I'm doing it with people, and we're having fun. We're a very high performing team.

Joanna: Well, fantastic. So if people want to come—

Where can they get tickets for Author Nation 2025? Is there any way they can access what happened at 2024?

Joe: Sure. So right now, early ticket sales are open. So we have a deeply discounted ticket that you can buy in the month of January. So if you came to the show and bought your ticket at the show, they got the best price, and that was only available to those people that came to the show.

Now we have our early bird special, and you can go to AuthorNation.live and sign up for that.

We also have another offer there called the Regret Remedy Bundle. So what is that? There was a lot of people that were like, well, I'm going to just wait and see how this show went.

Then they lost their mind after they saw all the fun and their friends were who were at the show that were like, “Oh my God, this thing is amazing,” and all over Facebook are people sitting on these big white leather couches with smiles on their faces.

So if you, for whatever reason, didn't come, you can buy this Regret Remedy package. It includes the after party, so you'll get all the videos from 2024. Also, it's bundled with a ticket for 2025.

In both cases, we offer an installment plan, so we're trying to help you manage your cash flow as well. If you can't afford the full ticket, you can break that up over a six-month period to manage your cash flow better.

So again, go to AuthorNation.live to learn more about those. We've got some examples of the sessions from 2024 to give you a feel for what the show is like and all the fun testimonials from people.

I can say this, as far as the 2025 show, we've got some amazing stuff lined up. We haven't announced it yet because we're contracting things right now, but when you look at last year, we had Kevin Smith—did you stay around for the Kevin Smith?

Joanna: Yes, I was there. I'd never heard of him. Then I was like, oh, this dude is funny.

Joe: I think that a lot of people were like, why Kevin Smith? He's this old director from the 90s. One, he was so generous with his time. The session alone was almost two hours, and then he hung around with people. More so, he honestly spoke about being a creator and talked about major issues that he had in his life.

He had a severe heart attack that almost killed him. He had a nervous breakdown. He spent time in a psychiatric hospital. He talked about all those issues and was really motivational to people.

So those are the kind of people we're bringing in to have authors see, like, you're not the only ones that are having these kind of issues. Here's a dude who's a big Hollywood movie guy, and he's dealing with the same stuff as a creator getting words on the paper.

Joanna: Yes, fantastic. Also, we should say, since this is a podcast, you have a podcast.

Where can people find your podcast?

Joe: Sure. So you can find me at JoeSolari.com. If you're interested in some of the stuff I'm talking about around how your creativity works and this up-spiral concept of designing your business around your creative cycles, that's where that information will be.

One of my things is that I do a paid newsletter, and each year I have 45 emails on a specific subject. This year, all the research I did last year on this is being pumped out in those emails.

I talk about, like, how do you honor your default mode network? How do you work on your executive function? How do you think about becoming a creative athlete?

Oh, and then the Author Nation Podcast. That's another thing. That's on all the major channels. We have a YouTube channel as well, that way you can watch the video.

Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, Joe. That was great.

Joe: Well, thank you. I just want to put out a special thanks to all the folks in your community that came to the show. It's not lost on Suze and I the time and effort it takes to come to an event like that. I want your community that comes every year to feel welcome and that we really love having you there.

Joanna: Oh, well, thanks so much.

The post Balancing Creativity With Building A Business, And Author Nation With Joe Solari first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Are you curious about the hidden structures that turn ordinary manuscripts into irresistible page-turning stories? Wondering how to shape your characters, scenes, and chapters so readers can’t put your book down? Kristen Tate shares her tips.

In the intro, key book publishing paths [Jane Friedman]; sub-rights and why it’s important to understand how many ways your book can make money [Renee Fountain]; the innovation of the indie author community and biggest changes in publishing with Michael Tamblyn [KWL Podcast];

Plus, 10 publishing trends for 2025 [Written Word Media]; Unveiling 2025: Indie authors gear up for AI innovations and craft renaissance [Indie Author Magazine];
How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition is out now; and join me for a live webinar: 7 steps to write your non-fiction book in 2025, 15 Jan.

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 writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Kristen Tate is an editor and founder of the Blue Garret, offering editing services and advice for authors. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University, focusing on novels and publishing history. Her latest book is Novel Study: Decoding the Secrets and Structures of Contemporary Fiction.

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

• Most common mistakes authors make with openings
• The differences between scenes and chapters
• How to plot a page-turner
• The continuous development of an author's writing process
• Balancing reading for pleasure and reading for research
• Inadvertent plagiarism and the boundaries of fair use
• Benefits of working with a human editor
• Utilising AI tools while maintaining your author voice

You can find Kristen at TheBlueGarret.com.

Transcript of Interview with Kristen Tate

Joanna: Kristen Tate is an editor and founder of the Blue Garret, offering editing services and advice for authors. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University, focusing on novels and publishing history. Her latest book is Novel Study: Decoding the Secrets and Structures of Contemporary Fiction.

Welcome back to the show, Kristen.

Kristen: Oh, thanks. It's great to be back with you.

Joanna: Yes, and you are primarily an editor, and you're actually my editor. So we've talked about that before. So it is very interesting having you on the show to talk about this book.

Why write a book on the craft of writing fiction when you focus so much on editing?

Kristen: So I think for me, and I think this is true to some extent for you and other people who write nonfiction, but I really write to learn. It's just one of the ways I understand the world. So this book was one that when I started editing fiction, I wanted to be able to find this book, and never did find it.

We were talking a little bit before the interview started about my first book. It's a collection of book reviews of writing craft books. At the end of writing that book, I realized that all along I had secretly been hoping to find like the one true formula for writing an amazing novel.

I did find formulas, they are out there. They can be really useful, especially for beginning writers who are just starting to feel out what it takes to shape a plot or something like that.

From an editing standpoint, they don't really fit a lot of books. Each book is kind of its own, you know, it's kind of like children. They're all pretty unique.

So I decided that I really wanted to start from the other end, and start from novels that I thought were successful in different ways, and just take them apart and figure out how they worked. So I just kind of did that through writing.

It started as a blog, and then it eventually turned into a book so I could formalize it and share it with a wider audience.

Joanna: You mentioned there that you focused on books that were successful in different ways. What I actually appreciated is you didn't go to the common classics. I think so many writing books use older books that I feel in many ways aren't so relevant to modern fiction writers.

How did you choose the books that you focused on in this book?

Kristen: So this is one of the beauties, actually, of being an indie author. So it was partly my taste. I didn't have to do this strategically. I didn't have an editor or a publishing house saying, “We want you to cover these books,” or, “It would be more saleable if you covered X, Y and Z.”

I really started from books that I knew I wanted to learn from and thought were doing something interesting. I also really deliberately chose a big range of genres, in part because I wanted mystery writers to find something there for them, and romance writers to find something there for them.

Also, I feel really strongly that if you're writing genre fiction, it can be really helpful to learn from other genres. And so I wanted to give readers a way, even if they don't read a lot of mystery novels or fantasy novels or whatever, I wanted them to get a sense of just what the different opportunities are in that genre.

Joanna: I actually ended up buying one of the books.

Kristen: I keep hearing that. I think that's lovely.

Joanna: Yes, and just to be clear, there were no spoilers in the book. You managed to avoid that. So that was quite a feat as well.

Kristen: Well, for most of the books, there's a big chapter on like the overall structure, but there's a spoiler alert. So you know that if you want to read the book first before getting the spoilers, you have to hurry up and do that before you read that chapter.

Joanna: Yes. So the book is full of common questions that writers ask, or perhaps don't even know how to ask, so we're just going to go through a couple of them. You say, “Having edited hundreds of novels by this point in my career, I can tell you that the opening is the most challenging section for most writers.”

What are some of the most common mistakes you see with openings, and how can we improve them?

Kristen: So I think there are two big ones that I see over and over, and it's mostly just a misunderstanding of what readers want to know first.

So I often see newer writers try to give us all the information, all the kind of surface information about their protagonist. Things like their full name, like their last name, their hair color, their eye color, and all of this detail about physical appearance.

While we want to know about that eventually, the thing that readers really want to know is what is this character thinking and feeling. What's their story? What are they up against? What do they want? What do they need? What's standing in the way of them getting that?

All of this other stuff that I think writers are very anxious about, like, how do I get my character in front of a mirror so I can have them looking at themselves and describing themselves? You know, that's not a problem you have to solve.

Just wait for a moment where it's going to come up organically. Maybe it doesn't even ever come up, and it's just less important.

Then the other common problem I see is that, especially for a character-driven work, I'll see writers try to front load the character's backstory.

So they want us to know all of this really important information about how this character came to have the problems or the weaknesses that they have and that they're going to have to get over.

Like that's the really important part of the character arc. We need to know what's holding them back and how all of that happened, but rather than starting with it, you really want it to come more in the first third of the novel, or maybe in the halfway point. We just don't need it up front.

Again, what we need up front is what's happening right now because that's the thing that's going to pull us into the novel and give us a reason to keep reading. Everything else is kind of old news, right? The character still needs to wrestle with it, but it's already happened. So it's just not as interesting to us as a reader.

Joanna: On that, I remember taking ages to understand what a scene was. I think it was Larry Brooks' Story Engineering book that I finally learned what it was, like about four or five years into writing fiction. I confused it with a chapter.

Of course, there are writers like James Patterson who has one scene per chapter, and that might work with a lot of thrillers.

What is a scene and what is a chapter? Why are these things so important?

Kristen: Yes, that's a great question. I like to think of scenes and chapters as being just different size containers. It's really important to remember that readers experience your book across time.

I think when we are deep inside a book, like we've been in it so long and we know the whole story. This happens to me as an editor too. We forget that the readers are understanding the story sequentially.

So part of what's important about scenes and chapters are the white space breaks, like getting to the end of that container. The size of the container conveys different messages, so a scene break is a smaller break and signals to the reader that there's some kind of shift happening.

We might be doing a time jump, maybe we're switching to a different point of view, any of those kinds of things. Whereas a chapter break is much more emphatic and gives you a chance, as a writer, to use that extra white space to underscore something like a theme moment.

I really like writers to pay a lot of extra attention to the few sentences right before a chapter break because they get to resonate over that white space. So it's this extra tool that you get.

Then within the container, those are all kind of little mini stories in there. So they have a beginning and a middle and an end. It's not just like you're taking this big, giant stretch of material that is your story and arbitrarily breaking it up into pieces that go in these different containers.

The scene is where you really get to be thoughtful about how those pieces work. It's a way too of communicating to the reader in a subtle way what the structure of your book is.

So you can see this where many authors will include part breaks, and that's just a way of waving a flag to the reader and saying, okay, we're having an even bigger shift here. We're going to move to like a whole different act two of the novel.

Joanna: I think also when I first was writing, I liked to end the chapter with something that wraps it up. Whereas, what I think I learned from James Patterson is that you can include a cliffhanger to make readers turn the page.

I know you said there's some nice white space there, but if you want to increase the pace, you can split a scene across a chapter. So it carries on as if there's no time difference, no person difference, but it gets them into a new chapter.

As you say, some people might read two chapters before bed or something like that. So it just keeps reading. So you can play with these containers as well.

Kristen: Yes, and I mean, that's a good thing. You don't want every chapter to be a cliffhanger. You want to mix it up. Thinking about those containers as ending in different ways is a really useful way to do it.

Joanna: So another thing I think is really interesting in the book is you go through how to plot a page-turner. You know that I'm a discovery writer, and this is something that I have really thought about.

In fact, it might be something that I could achieve working with ChatGPT or Claude or something to help it corral my chaos into some kind of order.

Tell us a bit more about plotting a page-turner.

Kristen: Yes, I mean, this was one of the big questions I came into the writing of the book with. How does a writer go about constructing these complex plots, and just how do they work?

I think a lot in metaphors and visual metaphors, they really helped me. So I think for a page-turner book, I really think about roller coasters. So a lot of it is about managing the kind of tension and expectation for readers.

So if you think about a roller coaster, one of the key experiences is that very slow, steady climb up to this big height. You're building the anticipation, and you know you're going to go over that cliff, but a good roller coaster, that's not the only thing that happens.

You might have one of those at the beginning and another really cool one at the end, but in the middle, you have to provide other fun experiences. So there have to be some like loop-de-loops and like an unexpected curve.

So I think that's really what's happening in a page-turner, where you're trying to maximize the reader's investment and get them to leap over those white spaces at the end of the chapter. So that's one part of it.

I think the other part is really characters.

For a page-turner to really work, we have to care so deeply about your characters that we have to know what's going to happen to them.

Often too, I think you need very high stakes. So it really needs to be life or death. Or I think romance authors can tap into this sometimes, the happiness of the whole rest of your life is at stake. So I think those are the two qualities.

Then in terms of writing one, I think this part is hard. I didn't do a lot of research into the writing process for the books I studied, but I did look at some interviews and tried to find some detail about what these authors said about revision.

I think one of the takeaways is it can take a lot of revision, especially if you're a discovery writer. You really have to go back and spend some time engineering your story once you know what it is, and maybe building in some extra turns or adding some extra suspense through different techniques.

So I think you can, as a discovery writer, get it all down on the page and then go back and retool.

Joanna: Another discovery writer friend said to me that perhaps the only way to do it as a discovery writer is to think that anyone could have done it. Let's say it's a murder, you have to kind of write as if each of these characters did it, and then decide much later in the process who actually did it.

Kristen: You might just find in that case that you have to go back in and drop in your red herrings or your extra clues or something like that. So I think revision can be the key. I think it's really hard to plot a book like that with that kind of complexity and with characters that we really care about.

I think it's really hard to plot that without getting into the writing. I have not found an example, and maybe you'll get people writing into this saying that they know an example, but I haven't seen an example of someone saying, “Yes, I have been able to plot one of these very complex page-turner type novels from the outline stage.”

I think it's hard because I think that doesn't give you time to develop the characters that we care about and know what they might do.

Sometimes it is about the surprises.

I think often the best moments in a novel are where a writer will say to me, “Yes, like this character actually surprised me, and I thought they were going to do X, and they did Y.” I think that comes through in the writing, so I think it's good to tap into those discovery elements when you can harness them.

Joanna: Yes, it is interesting. I do remember seeing a picture of JK Rowling's spreadsheet for, I think, one of the Harry Potter's, or it might have been one of the Cormoran Strike books. I was sort of looking at the picture going, okay, that's how you plot something complicated with all of these different things.

I know some people use different software and all of that kind of thing, but it does feel like to do this kind of thing, sometimes you do need to plot a lot more in advance. I don't know, I feel like I go back and forth on wanting to try to change the way I write, and then just not doing that. I don't know.

You've worked with so many authors. Do people change [their writing style] over time?

Kristen: Yes, I think they do. I think a lot of it is knowing what your strengths are. If you're trying to make yourself do something you hate, that's just never going to work. I have definitely seen authors who have started out writing their early books, really from instinct.

Once they see the kind of revisions that I ask them to do—and I use a story spreadsheet, it's basically a reverse outline, really, as part of my developmental editing process.

Once they start to get those back and get the skill of seeing their novels from the top down, they start to learn how to build some of that stuff into the initial writing process. They also learn that, okay, this is something I can do during revision.

I'll see what happens when they're basically doing their own developmental edit at that point. So they'll write a draft just as they have always done, they'll do this reverse outline, and then they'll do their own revision round, and then be able to come to me and go straight into copy editing because they just built that in.

I definitely have seen that happen, and I think you learn new things with each book. I think there's something that happens after you get 10 books in or 20 books in, and some of that story sense just becomes really intuitive.

You don't have to think so much about things that you had to think a lot about at the beginning, like what is a scene? That just become second nature.

Joanna: Yes, definitely. I mean — 

Why do we bother if we don't learn something with each book?!

Kristen: Right, it's no fun then.

Joanna: Exactly. One of the things that I do hear from some people—I mean, I read a lot of fiction, I know you obviously do—but some authors say they can't read fiction in a niche, or just in general, because it affects their work or that they're worried about plagiarism.

Then the way you're writing about fiction here is in a much more deconstructive way. So how can authors read fiction, I guess, in one way to learn and structure and all of that kind of thing, but also sometimes turn it off and just try to enjoy a book. It's really kind of hard to balance both.

Kristen: I have people ask me all the time—

How do you still read for pleasure when you're also an editor?

I am able to just turn off the editor brain. I think it helps that I don't read books that I'm working on on my Kindle, and that's what I read 90% of my for pleasure reading is on the Kindle now.

I do understand this concern about the inadvertent plagiarism, and I think it's one of those anxieties that is not a real thing. Especially if you are putting your heart and soul into a book and weaving your own experience into it, I think writers are going to be less influenced than they fear by what they read.

That's especially true if you read a lot. I could see if you are doing a deep dive into James Patterson or something, I could see being influenced by his style. If you're reading a different author every couple of weeks, I just don't think that that's going to happen.

I think when you are not reading, especially like very recent fiction—and this is why I picked very recent books—you're not getting a sense of how style is changing, of other like tips and techniques and tools you might be reading.

I just feel really strongly that novels, I mean, going back to that child metaphor, they're all so different.

So the second you see a technique that another writer has used and pull it into your book, when you apply it to your own characters and your own plot and your own style, it's not going to be really recognizable as that same technique. It's going to feel really, really different.

I just think reading is one of those ways where we get to like writing —

We get to kind of intuitively let that story structure sink into us, and it's really the most pleasurable way to learn how to write.

I really advocate for writers reading more, and like I said, reading outside of their genre.

I guess if you really can't get over that kind of anxiety of influence, that would be what I would recommend. If you're writing genre fiction, go read some literary fiction. Or if you're writing mysteries, start reading fantasy novels. You'll pick up some really cool techniques to bring back into your genre that could be exciting.

Joanna: Or it can actually just really help you on voice. I do think about author voice. I don't know if you read Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club?

Kristen: Yes. Oh, they're so fun. I actually had COVID a couple years ago, and I had such a terrible headache that I couldn't read. So I listened to them all on audio, and I still have a positive memory of my COVID experience because I spent a week just listening to those books.

Joanna: Oh, fantastic. There's going to be a movie, so if people haven't read the books. I was really resistant to the book because he's very famous here in the UK. So I kind of thought it was one of those cases of a celebrity who got a book deal, and it was going to be bad. It's so not bad. It's just fantastic.

I read all of them, as you have, and I've started his new series and everything. When I was reading it, I was like, wow, this is so different to a book that I could ever write or would want to write.

I've read a few kind of cozies, and they haven't come across in the same way. I think I learned from that that you can enjoy books, because I mostly read darker books. I was like, wow—

You can just love these different types of books and learn from them, even if it's a realization that this is not something you're ever going to write.

Kristen: Yes, absolutely. I think, too, that's a lesson to put more of your own personality, and humor, and weirdness, and all of that into your books.

That's the thing that's so unique to you and is going to distinguish yourself from all of the other books that might have very similar plot moves. Often, they do, and readers just don't care.

Joanna: Or they want that, often.

Kristen: Yes. I mean, that's what tropes are all about. They want to see that familiar roller coaster move coming around there, it's exciting, but they want to see your spin on it.

Joanna: We talked a bit there about inadvertent plagiarism. I wanted to come back to the quotes in the book because, of course, you're quoting writers and the chapters are also themed around certain books and authors.

There'll be people listening who are writing nonfiction books and who are collecting quotes. So how do we both use quotes within the bounds of fair use, and maybe we need to explain what that is, and also—

How do we make sure not to plagiarize accidentally?

Kristen: I have an academic background, and that really got pulled into this book. When you're writing an English Lit paper, you're taught to do close reading and use textual evidence. So it's second nature to me to, if I'm making a point about the way something works in a book, to pull in a passage and take a look at it.

Let's step back a minute and talk a little bit about fair use. So the way I often see this pop up as an editor is authors wanting to use song lyrics in their books. I can't even count the number of times this has come up, and I think you've had legal advisors on your show, and it's a tricky issue.

It's a little bit different for songs because they're so short. So part of what the fair use principle is you're using a very tiny percentage of a work. We're respecting other people's copyright and IP and all of that. Songs are very, very short. Something that's a book length work is a lot longer.

There's kind of rules of thumb out there. This is one of those gray areas in the legal context, which is frustrating, I think, for those of us who want to follow the rules and have it be very black and white.

One figure I've seen floating around is not to use more than 10% of a work. So for an 80,000 word novel, that's actually a really high number. I didn't even come close to that.

In terms of writing nonfiction and using things deliberately, I think some of it is ethical. What I do see out there that I think crosses an ethical line are these things that are study guides of popular nonfiction books where it's kind of encouraging you to buy this shortened summary version in place of buying the actual book.

Joanna: They drive me mad!

Kristen: Oh, yes. I mean, that's one of those things where I see them out there, and I think this doesn't seem right, and how is this allowed? That's certainly not what I'm doing. It's not what you're doing. You often use epigraphs, I know, in your nonfiction books, and all of that's fine.

What we're doing when we're quoting authors in that way is really encouraging readers to go take a look at these books. You include a resource section at the end of all of your nonfiction chapters, actually pointing readers to those sources that you've quoted from. So that's really important.

If you're writing nonfiction and you're doing research, the rule is really to just take meticulous notes.

I use the highlighting tool on Kindle or transcribe notes. I don't paraphrase when I am taking notes because I want to be able to go back and check exactly what the original quote is.

So I want to know when I'm quoting and when I'm not, so I can make sure I flag that in the book. It's just about really keeping records, making sure it's all in one place, and you can go back and check that later. Or your copy editor can check it later and make sure it's accurate, and make sure that readers can find what you're quoting.

Joanna: Yes, so just basically —

Don't use song lyrics and don't use poems, as well, unless they're out of copyright because they're often very short as well.

I think some of the other things around fair use are parody. So you can use things for parody, but parody is very difficult. It's not something we're particularly doing.

Also as part of education and commentary, which is what you're doing. With your book particularly, I feel like it is commentary. When you've quoted things, even though they're within the fair use boundaries, it's still commentary. So it's transformative as well.

Kristen: Exactly. It's really just a matter of, as an author, you want to treat other authors with respect. If you're doing that, you're not going to go wrong.

Joanna: Yes, and also context. So somebody did this to me once, and I'm still sore about it. They took a line from one of my novels to make a case that I was some kind of fascist. I was like, that is a character saying something in a novel that you've taken completely out of context.

I feel like that is part of, like you said, about respecting other people. You can probably find quotes in people's books, like people picking quotes out of the Bible and things out of context. I feel like, as you said—

It's about respecting the person whose book it is and doing that in a positive way.

You don't want anyone to happen upon your book, or for you to share it and just be really upset that you've quoted them in some way.

Kristen: I really think of nonfiction books in particular as part of a conversation, but actually, I think you can think of fiction books the same way. So just in a conversation with another human being, you don't want to mischaracterize what they're saying. That just doesn't lead to a productive conversation.

What I'm trying to do in this book is show how these books work and encourage readers to read them. So I'm kind of extending the conversation that these authors have already started by publishing their novel.

Joanna: Nonfiction books, to me, have a lot of elements that might come off the page in some way.

How are you taking the book and the material off the page and into people's minds in other ways?

Kristen: This is something I feel like you do really well in your nonfiction as well, is you and your chapters with often questions, and as I said, your resources list.

I think, for me, this happened in two ways. As I said, I'm a very visual learner, and so when I was wrestling with, especially a lot of the kind of structural elements of these novels—

There's a chapter on N. K. Jemisin's The City We Became, which is such a great book. She has, I think, six or seven different point of view characters and narrators. So to wrap my head around how that worked, I ended up creating figures for a lot of these things.

They're kind of graphical, so I could wrap my head around it. So that's something that I have used as a learning tool. They're on my website, and so that's something that kind of comes off the page and can help readers.

Then another thing I'm getting ready to do in the new year that I'm super excited about is I'm going to start a Novel Study Book Club. So we're going to kind of keep this reading going. The theme for next year is going to be bestsellers.

There's going to be a Patreon community. We're going to vote on a recent bestseller to take apart and study this way each month. So I'm really excited to see how that's going to work and just use it as a way to encourage people to read more.

I think if people can do it in a community, and hopefully get some kind of resources around how to unpack the structure and how to understand it, that it might be more profitable and just feel a little bit less lonely.

Joanna: Yes, I think it is interesting to do that, and often when someone else points things out. Well, in my fiction, for example, sometimes you say things in the edit and I'm like, oh, I didn't even know I thought that, or I didn't even know that that was there.

When you read in a group like that, it may be that you find things within the text and it helps other people see things that will bring out new ideas.

Kristen: I think this can really help authors be better editors of their own work. If the way another reader is experiencing something surprises you, that's really a learning experience right there. That's a way you might come back to your own work and think, oh, well, how can I apply this here?

As a reader, I might experience this this way, but now that I know that another reader experiences it in a very different way, I can play around with my choices here.

Joanna: Yes, it's all about learning things and then putting it into practice. I was thinking about this, and obviously as we've mentioned, you're my editor, but I also use ProWritingAid, and we are in this time in the writing and publishing history of generative AI.

It feels like an author could put all the craft books into practice, including yours, and then work with ChatGPT or Claude and ProWritingAid and say, do I even need a human editor? Like, why would someone hire Kristen or hire another human editor?

What are the benefits of working with a human editor in an age of generative AI?

When does it add more than software, basically? I know it's a super leading question!

Kristen: Well, I mean, it's complicated, and I think the answer to this is going to change. I mean, I think the part that's not going to change is that ultimately, you're looking for human readers. As good as these tools are, and many of them are quite good, they just are not a stand in for a human reader, and that's what your editor is.

I think the other thing that I see happening in particular right now with these tools is that they tend to move people towards the most common solution or answer. That's a plus in many ways, but often if you're writing fiction, that's actually not what you want.

So especially if I'm working with an author who I know has used one of these tools, either in the planning process or maybe in part in the generating process, then as a human editor, my role is to help them be even more human.

If I can kind of then tease out an element that I can see, “Oh, I think this is your voice versus the AI voice, and let's figure out how to heighten that.” Or, “Here's a place where you took the most obvious next step in your plot. What are five or ten ways that you could just make a left turn here, and how would that impact the reader's experience?”

The other piece is really the human coaching element. I find this becomes a bigger and bigger part of my editing practice is that writers, it doesn't matter how experienced they are, there's going to be some kind of emotional or psychological stumbling block in a book.

They may run into imposter syndrome, or they just get stuck, or they encounter writer's block or something. You really need a little bit of, I think of it as book therapy, to get a writer out of that.

It's a mix of encouragement and reminding them of the elements that are already working in their book and trying to give them a layout of a reasonable path in front of them for how to do the revision work that they need. An AI cannot do that very convincingly yet.

I think you really do need a human being on the other end of the screen, or the phone, or just in the Microsoft Word comments to help keep you going.

Joanna: Yes, which is that real value added side of things. I still think perhaps early writers believe that editing is just fixing grammar and typos, whereas that's a tiny, tiny piece of it. I mean an important piece, but still, as you say, it's not necessarily the most important.

You did say that sometimes when you're working with people who use AI tools—obviously, I'm very honest with you about my usage, and you've not had an issue with that, and obviously I use things in an ethical way.

So can you tell then, if someone hasn't told you, do you notice? Also, do you have a problem with AI use? Also, you're part of an organization for editors.

Should editors have a problem with AI use? Where's the line around usage?

Kristen: I think everyone's got to decide this for themselves. People have really strong feelings on this issue, and I understand them. I have the advantage of I live in San Francisco, and my partner works in tech. He told me, probably three years ago, these LLMs are going to be able to write a novel.

I was horrified, and said absolutely not, I don't believe you. I kind of had a mini tantrum. It prepared me for the fact that actually, now they can.

Now I definitely don't have people coming to me who have just spat out an entire novel using one of these tools. The fact is that they are not good at that. Yes, it can be done, but they're just going to be cliched and boring and generic.

Again, these models, they're geared not towards creativity and uniqueness and all of that. That's just not what they do. I think also you can detect when that human element isn't there.

So I don't have any problem with writers using them.

I can often tell, especially if it's a writer I've worked with a lot, and then they'll send me a synopsis or something, and it's just in a really different voice. The AI voice tends to be quite flat. It's very correct, but it's very flat. So that is something I've started to notice.

I think the thing that we have to do on both sides of the editor-author relationship is just be really upfront about how we're using these tools, when we're using them, and experiment with when they're helpful and when they're not.

I am absolutely 100% sold on using these AI tools to write book descriptions, for example.

Or for example, in my own book, what I did use it for was to help me with the takeaways that are at the end because they're really good at summarizing.

I then had to rewrite them in my own voice because they didn't have my voice, but even that part might come. So I think it's just going to be a matter of communicating with one another. I think being really upfront with what we're doing.

One of the things I'm adding to my contracts for 2025 is having a clause in there that makes it really clear that I'm going to ask for consent before I use one of these tools on anyone's novel.

Many of my clients are going to say no. In fact, I would say probably the majority of them really don't want me using any of these tools, and that's absolutely fine.

I think on the other side, just authors coming to me, they can tell me, “Okay, well, I've used this tool for outlining.” Certainly, some authors are not as good at a dialogue, or they're not as good at setting, or they don't think about smell or whatever.

They have a weakness that they know that they're trying to compensate for, and they can use one of those tools to provide ideas. If I know how they're using it, then I can, again, make sure that human element doesn't get lost.

I can make sure we're finding all of the opportunities to get their own voice in there and get rid of that kind of AI flatness that can creep in.

Joanna: Yes, interesting times indeed. We've been working together quite a few years now, and I use the tools more and more for different things, but as you know, I work with you on every book and every short story, and I don't feel like there's any detriment to the process.

I feel like it's almost improved a lot of areas of my business and my writing, and using ProWritingAid I hope takes a bit of the basics off your shoulders so you can focus on the more interesting side of editing and the more human element side of editing, I guess.

Kristen: Yes, and I think this is kind of where we're heading, where a lot of these tools are actually not very good at some things. You know, some of the things like commas and all of that, and there are a lot of false positives. So I actually don't use those as an editor, myself, because it slows me down.

If an author uses ProWritingAid before they come to me, that's fantastic.

Just like you said, then I can focus on the really important stuff, like line editing. That's where the real magic of editing comes. I think for a lot of editors, like that's what they want to do as well.

Like commas interest me, but they're not quite as thrilling as taking a line that's a little clunky, or just flat, or the author is missing an opportunity to introduce a really beautiful parallelism, or sharpen up a metaphor. Like, that's where the real magic comes, and that's the stuff I love, and I know most editors love that as well.

It's much more exciting than fixing typos. The typos are important to me, and I'm a perfectionist, and I want you to have a perfect book, but let's focus in on the stuff that's really about the art. Let some of these tools do the heavy lifting in terms of things like fact checking, and for your books, in particular, checking quotations.

There are things now that these tools just make so much faster and easier, and we can use our very limited human time to focus on the stuff that will make a big difference.

Joanna: Fantastic.

Where can people find you, and your books, and editing services online?

Kristen: So my business is the Blue Garret, and you can find me at TheBlueGarret.com. Then if you're interested in joining that Novel Study Book Club, you can find me on Patreon at Patreon.com/BlueGarret.

Joanna: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Kristen. That was great.

Kristen: That was a lot of fun.

Takeaways:

1. Focus on Character and Present Action Over Details Upfront: Instead of front-loading physical descriptions and backstory, engage readers by showing what a character wants, feels, and faces right now.
   
2. Think in Scenes and Chapters as Story Containers: Use scenes to create mini-stories within the narrative and chapter breaks to control pacing, highlight emotional resonance, and keep readers turning pages.
   
3. Approach Plotting as a Process, Not a Formula: Complex, page-turning plots often emerge through drafting and revision. Embrace discovery writing and then retool the story’s structure once you understand its shape.
   
4. Read Widely and Deliberately to Improve Your Craft: Studying contemporary, diverse genres broadens your repertoire of narrative techniques and helps you integrate unique elements into your own voice.
   
5. Use Tools But Keep It Human: While AI and grammar software can streamline parts of the process, human editors bring insight, emotional support, and voice-cultivation that technology cannot replicate.

The post Writing Tips: Craft, Structure, and Voice With Kristen Tate first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Happy New Year 2025!

I love January and the opportunity to start afresh. I know it’s arbitrary in some ways, but I measure my life by what I create, and I also measure it in years.

At the beginning of each year, I publish an article (and podcast episode) here, which helps keep me accountable. If you’d like to share your goals, please add them in the comments below. 

2024 was a year of consolidation as I got my creative house in order and began to shift my creative and business processes. 2025 is going to be a year of personal and business changes as I turn 50 and focus on expanding the J.F. Penn side of things using Leverage as an over-arching theme. More details below.

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of memoir, thrillers, dark fantasy, and horror as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Leverage: Make more of what I have
• Launch of How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition
• My 50th year
• J.F. Penn bucket list and books: Blood Vintage, the ‘desert book,' ‘ the tallship book,' ‘the gothic cathedral book.'
• J.F. Penn short story collection — Kickstarter
• Joanna Penn — The Creative Penn Podcast and Patreon Community

Leverage: Make more of what I have

My over-arching theme for 2025 is Leverage, which can be defined as utilising available resources, assets, tools, and relationships to achieve more.

The famous quote by Greek mathematician Archimedes goes: “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world.” The idea is that you can achieve a lot as an individual — if you use leverage.

Here's an overview of some aspects and I go into more detail in the following sections.

(a) Leverage the books I've written but not made the most of yet.

• Launch How to Write Non-Fiction Second Edition everywhere by end of January 2025
• Work with my US agent, Renee Fountain, to get a book deal for Blood Vintage — or self-publish by the end of 2025
• Get my existing short stories into print. Write an extra two exclusive stories and launch as a Kickstarter Collection and then publish wide.
• Get Catacomb in audiobook format

(b) Leverage my existing available assets to bring in more income

• Do a monthly book marketing plan and organise paid ad campaigns per month for revolving first books in series and my main earners. I have been pretty scatter-gun at this recently, so I just need to get organised, and AI tools are good at helping with this!
• Organise my Shopify stores, CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com into more collections to make it easier for readers to find things they might want to buy.
• Reinvigorate my content marketing for JFPenn — make more of BooksAndTravel.page with links back to my stores, and do fiction specific content marketing with the aim of surfacing more in the LLMs as generative search expands.

(c) Leverage AI tools to achieve more as a one-person business

I already use a lot of AI tools as part of my creative and business processes, but everything is quite disjointed as I create in different places and bring it all together myself.

2025 brings the promise of AI agents — where you give the AI agent a goal and it will plan a multi-step process and then execute that plan on your behalf after your approval, with as much interaction as you like along the way.

I've glimpsed this step by step planning process as part of Google Gemini Deep Research, which I've started using as part of my book research and marketing processes. The potential launch of OpenAI's Operator in early 2025 is also interesting.

I'm primarily interested in using these tools for book marketing, which let's face it, is the part we all want to outsource! There are tools which already have AI embedded within them, which will hopefully become easier to use in 2025. I would love Meta Ads and Amazon Ads to have specialised agents we can use for book marketing. Fingers crossed on that!

I'm also researching how SEO works for ‘advertising' to the LLMs, as generative search continues to disrupt ‘old' ways of getting traffic to websites. I still think content marketing is relevant, and I am far more interested in doing more of that rather than social media, so I'm going to look into it.

I'll do more visual media — using Midjourney for images since that's still my favourite, but also RunwayML or Sora for video. I loved making my Blood Vintage book trailer, and intend to make similar trailers this year for my first in series books, and also the ones I am pitching for film/TV.

While I still intend to self-narrate my non-fiction and my short stories, I'm interested in using ElevenLabs for Catacomb, which has a male main character. In order to maximise potential distribution and sales, I'm waiting for FindawayVoices by Spotify to allow ElevenLabs files, which I think will happen in 2025.

OK, let's get into some more specific details.

How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition

January is all about the launch of this completely rewritten new edition. I'll be on lots of different podcasts talking about the book, and also doing lots more social media as well as paid ads to get the book moving.

How to Write Non-Fiction, the Second Edition is available now on CreativePennBooks.com in ebook, audio, paperback, large print, and hardback editions, and as part of bundle deals. It's on pre-order at all the other stores, available 31 Jan 2025. You can find it here on Goodreads.

My 50th year

In March 2025, I'll be 50, and as we all know, it's a big birthday! I've had a goal on my wall for many years — “Create a body of work I'm proud of. 50 books by 50!”

I'll let you know in March whether or not I have achieved that goal, but regardless, I am still in the middle of creating a body of work I'm proud of! I'm not intending to stop any time soon. I will be doing some trips and celebrating, and as ever, I'll share on Instagram @jfpennauthor (also Facebook @jfpennauthor).

J.F. Penn bucket list and books: Blood Vintage, the ‘desert book,' ‘the tallship book,' ‘the gothic cathedral book.'

I have three main bucket list things that I'd like to achieve (at some point) but are essentially out of my control. These are not 2025 ‘goals,' but I'm sharing them as context as they shape some of my business decisions.

1. Get a traditional book deal (in English). I have had deals in foreign languages before.
2. See one of my books/stories as a film or on TV.
3. Win an award for my fiction as J.F. Penn (I'm an award-winning author as J.F. Penn for my memoir, Pilgrimage, and I've been a finalist for the ITW awards for best ebook original for Destroyer of Worlds).

I can't guarantee that any of these things will ever happen. The only thing I can do is create the conditions by which they are most likely to occur and keep putting myself and my books in the path of possible success.

Since 2009, while I have written some stand-alones, I've been primarily writing fiction in series — my ARKANE action adventure thrillers (13 books), Brooke & Daniel crime thrillers (3 books), and Mapwalker dark fantasy thrillers (3 books).

Writing in series is a key pillar of the indie author business model.

Essentially, write books in a series and promote the first in series with free or cheap ebooks and price promotions, plus bundle deals and upsells.

But series books are not so well positioned for my three bucket list items above. Stand-alones are easier to pitch for all three of those goals, which is why I'm changing my strategy in terms of what I'm writing and how I publish. I'll certainly be writing more books in series as well, but for now I am focusing on the following:

• Blood Vintage will either get a deal in which case it will likely come out in 2026, or I will self-publish it myself sometime in 2025. If I self-publish it, I will also narrate the audiobook, since the main character is a woman from my area of England.
• I will write ‘the desert book' and give it to my agent, Renee, to submit to publishers for a potential deal. Again, depending on timing, if everyone passes, I will self-publish that, too. I've already started the draft so it is underway.
• I have another stand-alone idea which I might get to — working title, the tallship book. It's based on a trip I did back in 1999 when I sailed on the tallship Soren Larsen from Fiji to Vanuatu in the South Pacific.
• I still have all the research for the gothic cathedral book and a stonemason character who needs a story so that may turn into a crime series, or a fantasy book, or something else. I'm still noodling on what to do with it all …
• I'll be pitching at London Screenwriters Festival again, and also continuing to network in the film/TV world. In many cases, it's about connections and serendipity so it's about being out there.
• As an over-arching practice, I will keep reading different kinds of fiction, and keep working with my editor, Kristen Tate, on improving my craft, and keep experimenting with short stories as well as longer works. I'll also keep filling my creative well in order to keep creating sustainably for the long term.

J.F. Penn short story collection — Kickstarter

I'm super excited about this, and it will probably be my next Kickstarter campaign. My fifth campaign in a fifth genre — why the hell not?!

I currently have 8 short stories that are not in print, and if I write 2 more exclusive for the collection, I could do a special hardback beautiful print edition, as well as the usual ebook, (self-narrated) audiobook, and paperback.

I love writing short stories, and I love reading them. I've backed a number of collections and anthologies on Kickstarter, and I think they're awesome as a way to experiment with different ideas. Mine span crime, horror, dark fantasy, archaeology, science fiction, and elements of literary fiction.

One of my new stories is inspired by The Hardy Tree. It's a real tree, or at least it was until it fell down in a storm a few years back. It was in St Pancras Old Church near Kings Cross Station in London. Here's a picture I took in 2017 and then revisiting the pile of gravestones in 2024.

The story goes that Thomas Hardy, author of Tess of the D'Urbevilles and many other classics, worked at the station in his early years, and his job was to move some graves which were in the way of the lines. He arranged them around a tree, but it's unclear what happened to the bones, or whatever else he might have found, or buried, there.

I studied Tess at school, as well as Far From the Madding Crowd, and Jude the Obscure was one of the reasons I wanted to go to the University of Oxford (Jude's Christminster). I'm pretty obsessed with Hardy and I've had an idea noodling about the tree for years — so that will be one of the exclusive stories in the collection, plus another one yet to arrive in my brain.

The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon Community

Every year I consider if the show is useful enough to make it worthwhile continuing, but in 2025, I am sure it's still useful. There is so much change coming in the year ahead and I want to keep paddling as we surf the wave rather than drown in it!

I also love the interaction we have in my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn, so I'll continue with my demos and office hours, extra training and articles over there. (You can join us for less than the price of a coffee per month!)

Double down on being human. In-person events, speaking, and travel

I'm going to do more in-person stuff, with a variety of things planned. We've kept a lot of space for various family things that are happening, so there will be more trips, but I'll talk about them later. (You can always find pictures on Instagram @jfpennauthor)

I'm doing a Library event in Bath on 22 Feb, then I'll be away for my 50th in March, doing a retreat with Orna Ross just outside Dublin, Ireland in April, and I'll be back in Las Vegas for Author Nation in November.

Health & fitness

I'll continue to lift weights twice a week and improve my dead lift, squat, and bench press. I will likely enter the same powerlifting competition that I did last year and improve my weights on every lift. But the main goal is to get stronger and not get injured!

I'll also continue calisthenics, with the goal of being able to do a freestanding handstand, a ‘skin the cat' movement on the rings, a one minute dead-hang, and a pull-up by the end of 2025. I can do variations of all those right now, but it would be a hell of a progression to get to the full movements.

If you’d like to share your goals for 2025, please add them in the comments below — and remember, I’m a full-time author entrepreneur so my goals are substantial. Don’t worry if yours are as simple as ‘Finish the first draft of my book,’ as that still takes a lot of work and commitment! 

All the best for 2025 — let’s get into it! 

The post My 2025 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Another year ends, and once more, it's time to reflect on our creative goals.

I hope you can take the time to review your goals and you're welcome to leave a comment below about how the year went. Did you achieve everything you wanted to? Let me know in the comments.

It's always interesting looking back at my goals from a year ago, because I don't even look at them in the months between, so sometimes it's a real surprise how much they've changed! You can read my 2024 goals here, and I go through how things went below.

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Spear of Destiny, the Gothic cathedral project, and short stories
• Award-winning memoir, Pilgrimage
• Blood Vintage, and working with a US agent
• The Creative Penn Podcast and Patreon Community
• Streamline TheCreativePenn website and redo Author Blueprint
• How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition
• Travel, speaking, and in-person events
• Financials, health and fitness, and happy cats!

J.F. Penn — Spear of Destiny, the Gothic Cathedral project, and short stories

I researched, wrote and then did a Kickstarter for Spear of Destiny, ARKANE Thriller #13, before publishing it wide a few months later.

I went to Vienna, Nuremberg, and Cologne in January, which was a chilly trip but inspired much of the story.

The Kickstarter ran in June 2024 and raised £12,536 from 313 Backers. I made a limited edition hardback with silver foil and a ribbon, and a specific cover for the campaign, which I love!

You can buy Spear of Destiny here in all formats on my store, or here everywhere else.

The hardback was available in bundle deals with the rest of the series, and I also bit the bullet over audio and had the first three books in the series re-narrated by Veronica Giguere (they had been withdrawn since my rewrites in 2022), as well as Spear of Destiny.

These kinds of bundles and Add-Ons really help a Kickstarter fund at a higher level, and they are also only possible if you sell direct as you can still make a profit, even with discounts.

I also had a goal in 2024 to produce a non-fiction photo book with essays about English Gothic Cathedrals. I did lots of research trips and read books on stone masonry, which was great fun.

But then I discovered the pain of photography permissions, even for your own photos.

Essentially, if you take photos on private property, you cannot just use those photos in commercial projects. You need photography permissions, which can take time and energy, as well as potential payment for every single one, plus the text that goes with it, and potentially even the layout.

I hate the idea of asking permission in general. It goes against my independent spirit, and when I researched it in more detail, I hated even more how long it would take, and how much to-ing and fro-ing there would probably be.

I am the kind of creative who enjoys wrangling chaos and I can be a whirlwind of creative energy. It doesn't fit well with the structured permissions process.

When I interviewed Leon Mcanally about his Dark Tourism book which was heavy on photos and permissions, I realised I just can't do this kind of book right now. Perhaps sometime in the future I might hire someone to work with, but it doesn't fit me at the moment, so that photo/essay book is not happening.

I still have a lot of research around gothic cathedrals and ideas for what else that could turn into. More to come on that in 2025.

I had a goal to write “at least one or two” short stories, and I managed two, De-Extinction of the Nephilim, and Seahenge, both of which I narrated in audio, and are available on my store, and in all the usual places.

I did the art for all my fiction covers this year, primarily with Midjourney, but also DALLE through ChatGPT. My cover designer, Jane at JD Smith Design, used the images to put the finished covers together.

I also used RunwayML to turn Midjourney images into a book trailer for Blood Vintage.

I also had a goal to get everything in audio, but I am still deciding what to do with Catacomb, so that is outstanding. I did change the cover on it and make a gorgeous sprayed edge hardback.

J.F. Penn — Award-winning memoir author, London Book Fair, 2024

Back in March 2024, I was thrilled to win the Best Non-Fiction at the Selfies Awards for my memoir, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. That was definitely a highlight!

J.F. Penn — Blood Vintage, a folk horror novel

Once I dropped the gothic cathedral project, I had space for ‘the vineyard book,' an idea that's been noodling around for a while.

I visited Limeburn Hill near me, one of the few biodynamic vineyards in the UK in the summer and really loved the foray into folk horror, a genre I enjoy reading.

I also loved designing the special edition cover with Midjourney.

The process also led to a connection with a US agent, who suggested we take it out for submission, so I went ahead with the Kickstarter for the Limited Edition hardback only, and retained the other editions for licensing.

The Kickstarter for Blood Vintage back in October 2024 was fantastic and I love having the gorgeous limited edition hardback out in the world. But it was a truly limited edition. There were only 200 hardback copies printed and I didn't sell it in any other formats. It's not for sale at all right now.

My US agent took it out on submission in September and we are still waiting for the final batch of responses. Apparently Frankfurt Book Fair, the US Election, and then Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year etc all tend to get in the way of business.

I am finally experiencing what I've heard about for many years in terms of the slow pace of traditional publishing, but I'm committed to the process now. We will see what 2025 brings for that book …

The Creative Penn Podcast and Patreon Community

Another year of podcasting completed — and we hit 10 million downloads, which is kind of incredible!

I changed the podcast logo and the theme tune, and thanks to corporate sponsors, Kobo Writing Life, Draft2Digital, ProWritingAid, FindawayVoices by Spotify, Publisher Rocket and Atticus, Ingram Spark, and Written Word Media — all companies I continue to use and recommend.

One big change was how much more I am doing inside of my community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. I've done tutorials on using aspects of AI tools and general topics around author business, as well as the monthly solo Q&A audio, and occasional live office hours. Thanks to all the Patrons who support the show! We now have over 1200 in the Community.

Joanna Penn — Streamline The Creative Penn website, redo my Author Blueprint

I needed to do a bit of clean up in order to move forward. I started out the year by entirely rewriting my Author Blueprint, which is a free ebook if you sign up for my email list, and you can also get the paperback on my store.

I archived a lot of posts and pages on TheCreativePenn.com and did a bulk cleanup of categories and tags. When you have a site as old as mine (started 2008), there's always backlist content to update or archive. Not a fun job, but necessary!

How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition

I also had a goal to update my backlist books for Joanna Penn, and How to Write Non-Fiction was the one that needed doing the most.

The first edition was from 2018, and since then my writing craft has improved a great deal, and I wanted to include aspects of memoir, as well as updating the business side of things, affiliate links, plus I wanted to narrate the audiobook.

It's all finished and on pre-order as I write this.

You can get it on my store, CreativePennBooks.com on 1 Jan 2025 in the usual ebook, audio, and paperback editions, and also in gorgeous foiled hardback (I'm still waiting for the proof as this goes out but it will be up soon). There are also bundle deals.

It will be out on all the usual stores on 31 Jan, 2025.

Travel, speaking, and in-person events

One of my goals when I became an author entrepreneur was to travel more, and while it's not been a bumper year (since my husband Jonathan has been busy with his MBA), I've still managed some trips for speaking and book research.

• Vienna, Austria plus Nuremberg and Cologne in Germany. Book research trip for Spear of Destiny
• Speaking in Seville for 20Books, Spain (the last 20Books conference)
• London Book Fair panels
• Corfu, Greek Islands, for beach holiday
• English gothic cathedrals trips — Salisbury, Winchester, Wells, Ely,
• Stone carving weekend, Somerset
• Death Valley, California, USA. I did a day trip for book research just before Author Nation, which was excellent.
• Author Nation, Las Vegas, USA. Fantastic conference and a great way for an inspiring (almost) end to the year.

Other goals

“Learn how to make beautiful books.”

I'm taking this goal as a win because I love both the special editions of Spear of Destiny and Blood Vintage, and now we can do sprayed edges with BookVault, we can do premium products more easily. Some indies are doing print runs with all kinds of special add-ons, so it really is possible to do anything now — if you have the time and the budget.

“Optimise my Shopify stores and Meta ads.”

I didn't do this, so it's a fail on this goal. My Shopify stores — CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com — continue to tick along just fine and I sell books direct in different formats every day. I did outsource Meta ads for the first few months of 2024 but once that ended, I just never picked it up again. I much prefer creating new things that optimising the old!

“Experiment more with AI tools.”

I certainly did this, and as ever, I consider myself an AI-assisted artisan author. As noted above, I've been using Midjourney for book cover images and social media, as well as a book trailer for Blood Vintage, where I also used RunwayML. I use Descript and Otter.ai for my podcast. I use ChatGPT and Claude for brainstorming, help with organising ideas, and also for writing sales descriptions. I am also now using GoogleNotebookLM for surfacing new ideas from my own content, and Google Gemini Advanced with Deep Research to help with book research, both are new use cases in the last few months. If you'd like more detail on how I use all these tools, I do tutorials and demos within my community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Financials

While I won't be giving specifics, The Creative Penn Limited is still a multi-six-figure (GBP), one person business, but income was down by about 20% this year — which is pretty significant. There are a few reasons why.

• I spent several months on things that needed doing but didn't earn any money — redoing the Author Blueprint, and updating the site and the podcast
• I wrote two books which haven't launched or earned much as the year finishes — How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition, and also Blood Vintage. The Blood Vintage Kickstarter was only for the limited edition hardback, which is the least selling format, so most of the money is still to be earned for that book, whether I license it to a publisher or release it myself.
• I didn't do any significant paid live events or paid webinars or affiliate partnerships
• I also didn't do as much paid marketing, and I really slowed down on social media, so my book marketing in general was reduced. This is partly because I have felt pretty jaded by the grind of both paid ads and social, so taking time away from both helped me create more and continue at a sustainable pace.

I'm also at a point in my career and my life where I have met a lot of my financial goals, and so I'm making creative decisions for different reasons.

For example, there is no doubt that I could have made more money from Blood Vintage in 2024 if I had released it myself in all editions. But I have a goal to get a book deal at some point, so it's with my agent, and even writing stand-alones over series books (generally) means less income for indie authors.

I'm happy with the choices I've made, but I also intend to have more releases in 2025, and reinvigorate my paid marketing, with the intention of making up that revenue.

It will also be interesting to review this at my tax year end after April 2025, as I will have made up at least the income on How to Write Non-Fiction by then.

Health and fitness

While writing and podcasting are my job, health and fitness is pretty much now my major hobby, and I spend time on it every day. Remember, we are not just brains! We need a healthy, happy body in order to keep creating in a sustainable manner. This is also part of my ‘more digital, more physical' mentality where I combine my use of technology with aspects of ‘doubling down on being human.'

I've been powerlifting consistently twice a week pretty much all year, as well as walking most days, and while I had decided to do my first competition in 2025, I went ahead and did one anyway!

I chose not to push myself that day but selected weights where I could achieve every lift, so I had a perfect 9 of 9 lifts. Squat 50 kgs, bench press, 40 kgs, dead lift 100 kgs. Here's me with my medal! (and no, I won't be sharing the action shots as no one needs to see me in a powerlifting singlet and long socks! The required kit for British Powerlifting is not flattering!)

I ended the year with PBs of squat 70kgs, bench press 42.5kg, dead lift 105kg, which I'm really pleased with.

I also started calisthenics mid-year, which has been a very different kind of movement — handstands, ring work and going upside down a lot, as well as hanging from the bar and various other things that I am only now starting to get used to. It's a fun challenge and certainly pushes my comfort zone and gives me a new perspective!

Happy + cats!

Most importantly, I'm still happily married to Jonathan, living in Bath, England, with our two lovely British shorthair cats, Cashew (brown one) and Noisette (black one). My baseline happiness is sorted, so everything else is a bonus!

How did your 2024 go?

I hope your 2024 had some wonderful times as well as no doubt some challenges — and that you have time for reflection as the year turns once more. 

Let me know in the comments whether you achieved your creative goals and any other reflections you'd like to share.

The post Review Of My 2024 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you create when there's an overwhelming list of things to do and too many competing priorities? How can you balance self-care with achieving your creative goals.

In this episode, I’ll share some tips from previous podcast guests to help you step back, reassess your priorities, and hopefully help you let go of at least some of the things on your list.

In the intro, Author branding [Self-Publishing Advice Podcast]; Example prompts if you want to explore your author brand; Google Gemini Advanced with Deep Research; How to Write Non-Fiction Second Edition; Tips for writing non-fiction, I'm on The Biz Book Broadcast with Liz Scully; Q&A on how to write non-fiction [Apex Author]; 7 Steps to Write Your Non-Fiction Book in 2025 — me on Reedsy Live, 15 Jan.

This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Show Notes

• (1) Tackle overwhelm by focusing on your ‘circle of influence' — with Mark McGuinness
• (2) Be kinder to yourself — with Ellen Bard
• (3) Sort out your sleep — with Dr Anne D. Bartolucci
• (4) Protect your private creative practice — with Austin Kleon
• (5) Overcome Resistance and adopt the attitude of a professional — with Steve Pressfield
• (6) Make the most of the limited time you have — with Todd Henry

Creative Clarity: Focus, Self-Care, and Letting Go

(1) If you’re struggling, focus on your circle of influence

Life can be overwhelming with work and family commitments and health concerns, even as the waves of change grow ever higher — with political shifts, technological change with generative AI, financial changes and of course, all the things we have to do as authors, if we want to get our books finished and out into the world, and reaching readers. 

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with everything, especially in difficult times. 

In April 2020, back in pandemic times, I talked to poet and creative coach Mark McGuinness about how to stay creative in difficult times. He reminded us of how to keep things in perspective, and why focusing on your circle of influence is the way forward.

“Here's another thing that I'm using a lot with clients and remembering to use myself is Stephen Covey's circles of influence and concern.

Imagine a big circle, right? And in this circle is everything that affects you and the people that you care about in your life. It includes the economy, the weather, the environment, it includes what other people are up to. It includes, I dunno, your sports team. And of course it includes all the stream of news and information that's coming at us.

Now we need to be aware of this because by definition, it's a circle of concern. It affects us. But now I want you to imagine inside of that, there's a smaller circle. It looks like a fried egg.

And Covey points out, this is in his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He says, the circle of influence will always be the smaller circle.

In other words, there's always more stuff happening in your life that affects you than vice versa. But here's how we use it.

The more time and attention you give to that big circle, the more anxious and disempowered and frustrated and overwhelmed you will feel.

And also the smaller the inner circle gets, 'cause you're not taking action on it.

Now we need to be aware of it. But. I would say definitely ration that and ration social media because there, there's so much anxiety coming at you from that and beyond a certain point, you've got the information and you're just mainlining anxiety.

Covey encourages us to focus on the small circle, the circle of influence, and ask, okay, what is in my small circle right now?

What can I actually do that's going to make a positive difference?

So stuff to take care of yourself. The restorative practice stuff to take care of your family, , people you care about, , stuff that will take care of your work and your business.

And the idea is that the more time you spend in this circle of influence, the more empowered you feel. And in fact, the more empowered you are because you're doing stuff that makes a difference. So that small circle can get quite a bit bigger. You can have a fried egg with a really big yoke in it, relative to the other one.

Definitely keep that image in mind, sketch it on a post-it, and stick it up above your desk. And keep asking yourself when, particularly when you feel overwhelmed, say, well, what is in my small circle here? If there's nothing, it's just a news item you're worrying about, then distract yourself from it.

Go and do something else. But ideally you want to find something, ‘Okay, I can go and do that right now, and then I will feel that I'm making the difference that I can.”

The question for you here is — How are you getting derailed by things that are out of your control? What is in your circle of influence and how can you focus on that instead?

You can find Mark on his podcasts, The 21st Century Creative,  and poetry show, A Mouthful of Air. 

(2) Be kinder to yourself 

Back in 2016, I talked to author and consultant Ellen Bard about balancing self-care and productivity, something I struggle with and I know many of you do, too.
Too much self care feels lazy and too much productivity can burn you out. How do we balance it all? 

“I think that we can be very tough on ourselves as indies and, you don't have to look at the kind of popular books around, , write 5,000 words and which, you know, I own all those books and I love them because I love productivity stuff. , but sometimes I do step back and think, whoa, just, relax. It's all good.

For writers in particular, I think there's a few different aspects where we can definitely be kinder to ourselves. The first one and the most obvious one in many ways is the physical.

So often as writers, we see ourselves as a brain. Maybe a brain with a pair of hands.

If we're on a good day, but do we remember that actually that brain comes in a body and there's a whole load of other stuff around the brain that needs looking after?

And so the basic stuff around getting enough sleep, eating the right foods, not over caffeinating or over sugaring, in your day when you are got the cookies or the biscuits down in the kitchen.

Keeping an eye on them , and balancing them out, so caffeine alone isn't gonna get any of us to write more words. It should be an enjoyable thing that we enjoy and we love drinking rather than something that is a crutch to make sure we hit that word count.

So the physical is the first thing, but for me it's the emotional piece for writers that is more pervasive and probably more of an issue that we don't even see.

For example, this idea of the self critic. All of us have in our head a kind of constant in the background narrative that goes on.

And for indies it might say ‘You don't do enough. You haven't done enough words. Your work is rubbish. You need to do more. Why didn't you do your marketing today?'

You should have been doing your Twitter and doing your words and doing this and doing that, et cetera, et cetera. Your plot is terrible. No one's gonna read this rubbish. I imagine some of us can resonate with that, but recognizing that that self critic is not the reality, that's just a voice in your head.

It doesn't mean anything. It comes from your environment. All the influences around you. There's no tick or tip, that I can give to people. It's to try and reframe that voice.

First of all, notice the voice and whether that means jotting again, when you hear something that that voice says, or just kind of keeping an eye on it and seeing what the themes are, just recognize that that voice exists, then try and reframe that voice.

And the best way for most of us to do it is to imagine that instead of a critic, it's our best friend because all of us. Talk to our best friend in a much nicer way than we talk to ourselves. Without question.

So trying to reframe that voice to say, okay, wait a minute. I've written two and a half thousand words. I'm tired. I need a break. What would my best friend say to me right now?

Would she say, well, those 2000 words were rubbish. You need to do them again and do some extra. Probably she wouldn't say that. So just trying to reframe that critic as a best friend is a really great tip.

Taking breaks is also really important.

So one of the things that The Artist's Way talks about, I think is very beautiful is this idea of filling the creative well. She uses Artist Dates. You can do that in any way. Whether that's reading a book, whether that's, going on a walk, whether that's taking photos.

We all have different ways of filling the creative well, but I think it's critical for Indies.

If we don't have something inside us to draw upon, then our writing becomes much, much harder because the well's dry.” 

You can find Ellen at EllenBard.com and she has books on self-care. 

Going on Artist’s Dates is a critical part of my own creative self care. In fact, just last week, I went to London, to the British Museum to the Silk Roads exhibition and then to Foyles bookshop, both of which made me think differently as I opened my mind to different perspectives. 

There were ancient manuscripts and books in Arabic in the exhibition, and I love arabic calligraphy, it looks so much like spells because I can’t read it at all. And there were maps of the ancient silk roads and how ideas moved along them, even over a thousand years ago, and that sets me off into thinking about new story ideas

Then there was a stone angel from Lichfield Cathedral and I remembered that I wanted to visit it, so that’s back on my list for 2025, and all of that just from getting out the house for a day on an artist’s date. 

The question for you here is — how can you look after yourself physically and emotionally? How can you incorporate some kind of artist’s date into the next month or so. Put it into your calendar. Book the time for yourself and then make sure you go. 

(3) Sort out your sleep

One of the biggest things that derailed my life in so many ways a few years back was lack of sleep. For me, it was hormonal and I sorted it out with HRT, but if you’re struggling, the important thing is sorting it out.

If you are not sleeping well, it’s going to affect everything. It might take a while to figure out what’s going on, but it’s worth the effort. 

In January 2022, Dr. Anne D. Bartolucci came on the show to talk about improving your sleep and how it impacts creativity. First of all, why do we even need sleep? And then later in the interview, Anne gave some tips for going to sleep, which might help you if this is an area where you need to get back to basics.

“We know a lot of why we need sleep because of what happens when we don't sleep.

If you are not sleeping or if you've had a rough night, we notice that we're not as sharp the next day. We notice that it's a lot harder to communicate. Maybe it's harder to focus on things.

We're grumpy and it's really hard to be creative when you're in this foggy, grumpy, irritable state, especially if that's your normal state because you haven't been getting good sleep for a long time.

And it was interesting. I was at a convention this past weekend here in Atlanta, and I heard at least two people talk about how when they come to a thorny problem in their writing and their manuscript, they will think about it before they go to bed.

And then often when they wake up, they'll have a solution.

And so we have all these interesting mental processes that happen when we sleep. Like our brain doesn't just shut off. No, it is working through the night and it's able to work in different ways while we sleep than it does during the day.

If people aren't getting enough sleep, they're more likely to develop anxiety or they're more likely to have relapses back into depression.

And if you think about this part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. Which basically helps the executive of the brain know what to pay attention to. So if your frontal lobes are your executive, the prefrontal cortex are the administrative assistant sitting outside the executive office saying, okay, pay attention to this. Don't pay attention to that. And when we are sleep deprived, the prefrontal cortex actually is less active.

And so the secretary's just letting everything through, including the emotions from the more quote unquote primitive part of the brain. I don't like calling it the primitive part of the brain 'cause it's still very necessary. But let's just say the older, more mature part of the brain, it's letting everything through.

It's a lot harder for our brains to sort out what's important, what should we react to, what should we not react to, which leads to more experiences of negative emotion.

And with anxiety, we're focusing on things that make us anxious and worried.”

“We are behavioral creatures even though we have evolved. We are still very behavioral creatures and our bodies and our minds like our routines.

One big way to improve falling asleep is to give yourself adequate time and space to wind down.

So think about those computers back in the nineties. Remember, they took such a long time to shut down all of their various processes that we chose a song to play while they did that.

Our brains are kind of like that. So giving ourselves at least an hour. No screens because screens have that blue light that is activating to our brain. And also a lot of the content on screens, even though we might tell ourselves it's relaxing, it can be activating, 

Jo: — especially in the pandemic, like the doom scrolling. Oh, just check it, check it one more time. 

Anne: Oh gosh. Yes. I would would've to say, yeah, that's probably the biggest piece of advice that I've been giving since, oh, about, say 2016 in this country, which is to really —

Limit your news exposure.

Otherwise we try to make sleep as simple as possible and so we try to not have too much extraneous things that need to happen in order for somebody to sleep, which is also another reason why we recommend that people not use sleep medication.

When you're taking something, you're giving yourself the signal that, Hey, I can't sleep on my own. So I would say the only hard and fast rules for sleep, if you want to know where to start with the basics are, try to wake up at around the same time every day.

Because we have these circadian rhythms, these internal clocks that tell us when to be awake, when to be asleep, when to be hungry. And if you want your body to know when it's supposed to be asleep, it needs to know when it's supposed to wake up. And so that's why they say get up at the same time every single day.

It's just not just to torture you on weekends like a lot of people think. And then on the other end, don't go to bed until you're sleepy. And then, yes, cut out screens an hour before bedtime and have a routine. And we say those are the basics.”

The question for you here is — what can you do to sort out your sleep if it’s something that is not working well right now? 

Anne has a book called Better Sleep for the Overachiever, and I also recommend Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. 

There are more specific tips around physical and mental health in The Healthy Writer, which I co-write with Dr Euan Lawson, and also in The Relaxed Author, which I co-wrote with Mark Leslie Lefebvre. They’re on all the usual stores and also you can get them in a healthy bundle on CreativePennBooks.com along with The Successful Author Mindset. 

(4) Protect your private creative practice

I’ve not been using social media much, and especially in the winter months, I feel like going inwards more than I feel like being online. It makes me feel that perhaps I need to keep that line over the rest of the year as well.

We don’t need to put everything out into the world. We don’t need to share it all.

In March 2020, I did an interview with Austin Kleon on his book, Keep Going, and in this excerpt, he talks about the importance of having a private creative practice. 

Austin: I think what's really important is to have some kind of private practice.

For a long time, for artists, part of the joy of making art was you could shut yourself away in a room or with a sketchbook or with your typewriter and let that kind of darkness and weirdness come out.

And I think now we're in this sort of share everything culture where. I think people don't feel like they can be as private.

I feel like private space is disappearing in a lot of ways. Like I feel like when people make things, they're very like. Oh, I should share this on Instagram right after I make it.

So, there's this feeling that you should share immediately after making things. And I think that in some ways I feel a little bit, I don't know that I feel responsible for that as much as I think my second book Show Your Work, which was all about sharing your stuff before you have a perfect finished product.

I think that got misinterpreted by a lot of people in that they felt like they needed to always share. And I thought the essential point of that book was you only share things that you want to share that you think are ready.

I just feel like people are like, oh, I made this thing. I should share it. And they're not putting any time in between when something is created and when it's shared.

And so I really think that one of the key elements for me as far as like exploring my darker stuff and figuring out like what's bothering me, what's itching at me, is to have a private place that I can go to do work.

And so that's why I keep a diary and a sketchbook is that a diary or a sketchbook is like a good place to have bad ideas. It's a good place to let those sort of demons come out. And to see what you're dealing with, and no one ever has to see it. I just think that our private lives are disappearing and privacy used to be the place that we would work on some of these things, you know?

Just think about where are the private spaces that you occupy, Like where are the safe zones where you can go and be as weird as you want to be.

And then, the question of having the courage or the whatnot to, to actually share the work. That's like a whole separate issue. But for me, like having a private space, because I'm such a public person now, it's been really, helpful to have private zones where I work.

And, I think privacy is important for everyone to have that kind of space to let things exist.”

The question for you here is — how can you keep a part of your creative practice for yourself in the year ahead? How can you protect that side of you that might want to experiment, and won’t do so if others know about it?

Perhaps that means starting a new pen name, or experimenting with a different genre, or finally writing that memoir, or taking a lot more time with a book because you don’t know what the hell it is — I have a feeling that the gothic cathedral book may be that for me, it might be like my shadow book [Writing the Shadow] which I talked about on and off for years as I figured out what the hell it was — anyway, what is that for you? 

You can find Austin at AustinKleon.com and I recommend his book, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad.

(5) Overcome Resistance and adopt the attitude of a professional

OK, enough self care and being kind to ourselves — it’s time for some tough love!

One of the books I return to almost every new year is Turning Pro by Stephen Pressfield. It helps me recommit to the creative life. It has some serious tough love in it and will help get you back to the page when you’re struggling. 

I’ve interviewed Steve several times over the years and he was kind enough to blurb Writing the Shadow since he also references Jungian psychology in his work. 

In an interview from 2014, we talked about his book, The Lion’s Gate, and also about how resistance tries to stop us creating, and then how we can overcome that with an attitude of turning pro, deciding why writing is important to us, and not letting anything get in the way of our creative goals. 

“This comes from a book of mine called The War of Art, and I talk about a force that I call resistance with a capital R. Like right now, as we're talking, here's my keyboard, right here in front of me, and when I sit down in the morning.

I feel like this negative force radiating off that keyboard that's trying to keep me from doing my work. And to me, I consider it's all self-generated. I don't think it comes from out there, but it's why we buy a treadmill and bring it home and then we never use it. Right?

Anytime we're trying to access a higher part of ourselves, I think this shadow element enters the picture like an equal and opposite force to the force of creation.

Another analogy I use is we have a tree and that's our dream, our novel or whatever creative thing, that tree casts a shadow and as soon as that tree goes up, the shadow appears.

That shadow is self-sabotage, procrastination, stubbornness, arrogance, fear, fear of failure, fear of success. All of those things that we as writers know.

And so to me, a big part of being a writer is learning to deal with that. And everyone finds their own way to deal with it. To me, I've said this many times, but writing is the easy part, the hard part is sitting down and actually starting to hit the keys.

I'm a big believer in professionalism and being a pro and, in the sense that —

A pro doesn't allow those negative things to stop her. She sits down and does her work. 

I think anytime we're trying to move from a lower level to a higher level. Capital R Resistance will kick in and try to keep us on that low level. When I was trying to learn to be a writer and was falling on my face over and over and over, the reason I decided finally was that I was an amateur.

I had amateur habits and I thought like an amateur and what turned the corner for me was just a simple turning a switch where I just kind of decided I'm gonna turn pro, I'm gonna think like a pro. And, a lot of times I think of athletes are great models for this.

One of the things about a professional athlete is they will play hurt. Right? Whereas an amateur, you sprain your ankle or something's wrong, you say, ah, well I won't do it today. But a pro goes every day. And I think that a lot of times the model for being a pro is just what we do in our jobs.

Like in our day jobs, we show up every day whether we want to or not. We have to get a paycheck. Right. Or, and we stay on the job all day, every day. We don't go home. We don't just say, oh, it's 10 o'clock. I'm tired of this. I'm going home.

But when we go into our works of passion, our novels or our books or whatever, we suddenly become amateurs and we think, wow, this is really hard. I'm gonna go to the beach. And we don't have that kind of hardcore professional attitude.

Courage plays a part, it takes a lot of guts to do this. Patience too. It's very important to be patient with ourselves, to allow ourselves to fall off the wagon sometimes.

Taking the long view is another aspect of it, not imagining we can write our novel in a week and a half.

And also I like to think of it as a lifelong practice. It's not just one book, it's not three books.

This is what we're going to do for the rest of our lives. This is what we do, this is who we are.” 

The question for you here is — how is Resistance appearing for you? And is it time for you to adopt a pro attitude to your writing in 2025? 

You can find Steve at StevenPressfield.com and he has a new(ish)book, The Daily Pressfield, 365 days plus a bonus week of motivation, inspiration and encouragement, and he also narrates the audiobook if you’d like to listen to more of his voice.

(6) Make the most of the limited time you have

Regular listeners will know how much I love the idea of memento mori, remember you will die. That’s why I love to get the photos of cemeteries and graveyards that you all send to me. It’s not morbid, it’s more about focusing on making the most of the time we have because we do not have much time at all. 

Back in 2014, I interviewed Todd Henry about his book, Die Empty and in this clip, he explains why it’s so important to be intentional about how you spend your time.

“We all have a finite amount of time on Earth, and we all have a finite amount of resources to spend in the pursuit of whatever it is we want to do.

So if we're writing books, we have a finite amount of time to get those books out of us, get 'em into the world, and provide value to those around us.

And, several years ago, a friend of mine was leading a meeting and he asked this kind of outta the blue question in, in the meeting.

He said, what do you think is the most valuable land in the world? We're all, we're all thinking, that's a weird question. I don't know, you know? , and he said, well, I think the most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. It's the cemetery.

Because in the graveyard are buried all of the unwritten novels, all of the unlaunched businesses, all of the unexecuted ideas, all of the things that people carried around with them their entire life.

And they thought, well, I'll get around to that tomorrow. I'll start that tomorrow. And they pushed it and they pushed it into the future until one day they reached the end of their life and all of that value was buried with them. Dead in the ground, never to be seen by human eyes.

And that day I wrote down two words.

I put them on the wall of my office, I put them in my notebook, and those two words were ‘die empty.'

Because I want to know at the end of my life, when I reach that bookend of my life, I'm not taking my best work to the grave with me. I've done everything I can on a daily basis to empty myself of whatever's in me to provide value to people around me.

If it's something I need to write, something I need to say to someone, a loop I need to close. I want to make sure I'm doing whatever I can on a daily basis to get that out of me so that when I reach the end of my life, I can die empty of regret about where I put my focus, my assets, my time, and my energy that I've spent myself in the pursuit of something worthy adult, a body of work that I can be proud of.

So that's really what die empty means. It's not collapse exhausted across the finish line. It's no —

You want to be able to die empty of regret about where you put your most valuable resources.

And unfortunately, for a lot of people, Joanna, they're not as intentional as they should be about how they spend those finite resources.

And they look back on their life and they realize they made decisions out of fear. They made decisions out of comfort. They made decisions that weren't really in the pursuit of something they knew was the right thing.

Instead, they chose a different path and they end up regretting that deeply. And so what I wanted to do is articulate some of the ways that we can be intentional about spending our resources in the pursuit of what matters most to us.”

You can find Todd at his site, ToddHenry.com and he has a podcast, Daily Creative, and a book of the same name. 

The final questions for you are — What matters most to you? How can you be intentional about how you spend your time in 2025?

Let me know in the comments or contact me here.

The post Creative Clarity: Focus, Self-Care, And A Little Bit Of Tough Love first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you write a book proposal that will make a publisher want to buy your book? How can you write a successful non-fiction book that both interests you and attracts a lot of readers? How can you improve your communication in person and online? Charles Duhigg gives his thoughts.

In the intro, HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray on audiobooks and AI [TechCrunch]; OpenAI's 12 days including Sora and o1; Google Notebook LM expansion; How Creatives Might Survive and Thrive in a Post-Productivity World [Monica Leonelle]. Plus, How to Write Non-Fiction, Second Edition.

Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a reporter at The New Yorker Magazine, and a multi-award-winning author whose book, The Power of Habit, spent three years on the New York Times list. His latest New York Times bestselling book is Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.

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 the writing process differs between books and magazines
• Balancing what readers want to read and what you want to write
• Research that comes before and after a book proposal
• Tips for conducting successful research interviews
• The process of organizing research for a nonfiction book
• Improving the art of written communication
• Dealing with the fear of miscommunication and judgement
• The importance of connection in communication

You can find Charles at CharlesDuhigg.com.

Transcript of Interview with Charles Duhigg

Joanna: Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a reporter at The New Yorker Magazine, and a multi-award-winning author whose book, The Power of Habit, spent three years on the New York Times list.

His latest New York Times bestselling book is Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. Welcome to the show, Charles.

Charles: Thank you for having me. This is such a treat.

Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. So first up—

Why did you get into writing books when journalism has clearly been such a success for you?

Charles: Well, it actually started when my wife was pregnant with our first child, and we didn't have any money, and so I thought, okay, I'll go write a book. Maybe that'll give me enough money so that maybe we can find a decent place to live.

My first book was The Power of Habit, about the science of habit formation, and it really came out of my own problems and questions. I wanted to figure out how to improve my habits, how to be able to lose weight and exercise more easily.

The process of writing a book, I found, is such a total joy and also overwhelmingly hard.

You get to get so deep into the material, you get to understand what's going on. Not only what experts are telling you and what stories you ought to tell, but also you get to think about the ideas in really profound ways.

So that just kind of became an addiction for me. I've really enjoyed writing books. Even though if you asked me in the middle of them, I would tell you it's the worst thing I've ever done in my entire life.

Joanna: Well, yes, all of us listening understand that.

It is interesting because, I mean, there's a lot of comparisons to your journalism. You interview a lot of people, and you include a lot of that.

How is the process of these longer form books different to your journalism pieces?

Charles: So it's a little akin to writing magazine pieces, because oftentimes for the magazine piece, I'll write 8,000 to 12,000 words, and each chapter of a book is about 7,500 to 9,500 words. So it's not that far off.

The difference is that when I'm writing a magazine piece, I can just write a magazine piece about whatever the topic is. I can write about AI, or I can write about politics.

With a book, you're writing the equivalent of, let's say, eight to ten magazine pieces, but there has to be something that ties them together.

There has to be an overarching argument or an overarching idea that every chapter reflects in a different way, and finding that idea can take a long time.

The two hardest parts, I think, of writing a book are, first of all, deciding what topic to write on. Oftentimes, it takes me a year or two to really figure out a topic that I think is going to be interesting and that I think readers are going to think of as interesting.

Then it oftentimes takes another year or six months to figure out what the overarching argument is. Oftentimes it's not obvious from the reporting what that connective tissue is, but it's my job to find it.

Joanna: That's really interesting that it takes you a year or two to figure out what you want to write. You mentioned there what you're interested in, but also want the what the readers want. So what is that process? Because this is something we all struggle with. I write fiction as well, and much of my audience do.

How do you find where those two things — what you want, and what the readers want — interconnect?

Charles: I think a big part of it is you just have to indulge things and then be prepared for them not to be successes.

So take Supercommunicators, my most recent book, which is about the science of communication. It originally started with me trying to figure out why some people were better listeners than others.

I thought it was a book about listening, but the thing is, that as I talked about it with my editor and as I did research, I realized listening is a little boring on its own. Most people don't wake up saying, “I really want to be a great listener.” They say, “I want to be a great listener and I want other people to listen to me.”

So it took a little while to figure out, okay, this is actually about communication. Then once we started figuring out it was about communication, it also got a little bit boring to me.

It just seemed like there was so much research and so much advice out there on, “This is how you should hold your arms,” or, “This is how you should repeat back what the person said.”

After a little while, and particularly after talking to neuroscientists about why communication works within our brains, what I realized is it's actually not a book about communication, it's a book about connection. How do we connect with other people?

The methodology for connection is often conversation.

Communication and conversation is how we connect, but the thing that is under that is how to connect with other people.

Now that question, how do I connect with anyone? That seems like a question that a lot of people would be interested in. I can see myself caring about that when it comes to parenting. I can see myself caring about that when it comes to managing people at work.

I can see me caring about that when it comes to sales or being in government or trying to evaluate political leaders.

So the process of figuring out what is both interesting to me and interesting to a broad audience is a matter of listening to my own curiosity —

Following my own curiosity, but also being challenging and skeptical.

Just because I think it's interesting, I need to prove to myself and my editor that many, many other people will think it's interesting as well.

Joanna: So you mentioned there about proving to your editor and also finding a connection with the market that might buy the book. I'm interested because, obviously, you're several books in, you're very successful, do you still do a book proposal when you have an idea?

Charles: Absolutely.

Joanna: Tell us about that because it feels like that's something we need to know about.

Charles: For nonfiction is a little bit different than for fiction.

In nonfiction, you put together a book proposal, you sell the book proposal, and they give you an advance based on the book proposal.

Then you use that advance to essentially go write the book.

I mean, in theory, I could hand my editor a two or three page book proposal and say, “Let's sell this,” but the thing is, I have to do the work at some point. You have to come up with a grand outline at some point and know a map for the directions you want to move in.

So what I do is I put together a 50- to 70-page proposal. I started this with The Power of Habit before I was a known writer, but I've used it ever since. That proposal is, first of all, written in the voice of the book. So it's actually as if you're reading little samples of chapters from the book.

So there's little anecdotes in there, there's interviews. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to prove to myself, as much as my editor, there's enough here for a book. Like if I spend another two or three years reporting on this, I'm going to come back with something amazing.

So writing that proposal and polishing that proposal, again, 50 to 70 pages is pretty long, making that into something that is really compelling. That allows me to kind of stress test whether there is a book there.

If I can't write a great proposal, I'm not going to be able to write a great book.

The other thing is that for the publisher, it gives them a lot of confidence. So when writers come to me in nonfiction and they say, “How much time should I spend on my proposal?”

I always say, well, look, for your own sake, you should spend a lot of time on it, but equally for the publisher's sake. They are going to be comfortable paying you a larger advance if they have a fully fleshed out proposal. Since you have to do that work at some point, why not do it when it's going to make you a bigger advance?

So my advice to folks is that it oftentimes takes me 6 to 12 months to write a proposal, but by the time I write that proposal, I know what that book is going to be about. I figured out that overarching question, that overarching idea, that overarching theme. I figured out how each chapter fits into it, and from there, it's just labor.

Joanna: Yes, labor. The research then, because obviously you mentioned there that you're going to go on and spend more time on it, but you also said there's snippets from interviews in that proposal.

How many of those interviews are you doing up front, and how many come later?

Where's the research based?

Charles: So, both because oftentimes what happens is you write the proposal, and then once you start writing the chapter, you realize, like, oh, there's 20 other people I need to talk to. I would say for a proposal, I usually talk to at least 15 to 20, sometimes as many as 30 people.

Again, what I'm doing is I'm calling people up and I'm basically saying—these are experts, these are folks who have written a paper on communication that I think is interesting.

I'm calling them up and I'm saying, “I read your paper, and I thought it was really interesting. I'm not smart enough to really understand it, but I'm just wondering, what do you think is the most important takeaway from your research? When you're having beers with friends and they ask you what you do for a living, how do you explain to them why what you do is important?”

What I'm trying to do there is —

I'm trying to get these folks to think on my behalf, to explain to me what's interesting or important within this field that ought to be shared with other people.

The reason why I ask the question that way, almost like, “I'm too dumb to understand why you're smart, so tell me why you're smart,” is that what happens is that oftentimes people will do two things.

First of all, they'll explain to you the significance of their research, rather than just the research itself, which is really important because that helps you create this mental map of why this research matters.

Then secondly, they'll oftentimes tell you about anecdotes or little funny things that happen in their lab, or things that they didn't end up publishing, that end up being really great aspects of telling the story.

I interview a lot of people. I would say for the average book, if I talk to 20 or 25 people for the proposal, I'll easily talk to another 150 when I'm reporting the book.

My goal is the same every single time. My goal is to get this person to essentially say something they haven't said before. To explain to me not only what they've done, but why what they've done is important, and what was interesting about the process of doing it.

Joanna: Just on a sort of author technical question, how are you organizing that amount of research? Are you recording, like AI transcription? Are you keeping like little cards, like Ryan Holiday?

What is your process of organizing the research in order to go on and write the book?

Charles: So I'll tell you what I do for each chapter, and this is also what I do for magazine stories. I'll create a folder, I'll come up with a call list. I'll identify 30 or 40 people that I want to talk to, and I'll prioritize them, and I'll start with number one.

I'll reach out to them, and I'll do an interview with them. I'll ask if I can talk to them on the phone.

I'll oftentimes record that call, but the recording is really just a backup. What's important is, at least for me, is to take notes as I'm speaking to the person.

First of all, it's much more efficient than reading through a transcript, just to have notes that I take during the interview. Then second of all —

It's the process of taking notes that helps me see what's important about each conversation.

So I'm oftentimes, in these notes, I'm transcribing what they're telling me as they're telling it to me and typing quickly, but I'm also leaving little notes for myself. Like in all caps saying, like, “This is an idea,” or “We can connect this to that.”

Then once I've done all my interviews and I have a sense of what the chapter is about, I take all of my interviews and all my other research—because there's a lot of studies involved— and I take a bunch of index cards.

I go through all the interviews and all the studies, and I write on the index cards, usually just like one or two words, maybe half a sentence, of each idea or quote I might want to include in the chapter. Each chapter produces something like 200 or 300 index cards.

The idea here isn't necessarily that the index cards are exhaustive. The idea is that I’m creating an index of everything I've learned. I don't have to think right now about how I organize it, I just have to think about getting it onto these cards. In the corner I'll put where each thing came from, so it's easy to look up later if I want to look it up.

Then I'll take all those cards and I'll make little piles, and I'll try to arrange them as the sequence that they will appear in the chapter.

So if this idea comes first, and these two quotes are related to this idea, then this next idea should come second and this anecdote happens now, and I'll create little piles of cards.

I mentioned I have 150 – 200 index cards, sometimes 300. I would say that when I'm organizing them, they all get put in the organization. Only probably 50 or 60 of those cards are going to end up in the story or in the chapter, but the process of organizing is really, really important.

Our job as writers is not just to learn and convey information.

Our job is to organize the information in a way that's memorable and entertaining.

Once I have those cards together and I've organized my cards, what I do is I write just a long letter to my editor. It's almost kind of like rambling. I'm not thinking about choosing the poetic language. I'm not thinking about making sure that I'm getting to every idea in exactly the right order or setting everything up.

What I'm doing, though, is I'm basically trying to describe. It usually starts like, “This is the way this chapter will work.” Then I just start and say, like, “Oh, there's a story I'm going to tell from here. Then this guy told me this one idea that's kind of interesting.”

I'm using the organization that's occurred to me in organizing the cards to organize this letter. Then I send that letter to my editor, and that letter oftentimes will be 4000 words long. A chapter is, at most, 9500 words long. So I'm literally writing essentially the equivalent of half a chapter in a letter to my editor.

I'm not worrying about anything.

I'm not worrying about anything except trying to figure out what the ideas are and how the ideas connect to each other and in what order.

Then my editor will oftentimes write back and say, like, “This is interesting. This is interesting. This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my entire life.” You know, “This part's boring. This part, I kind of see where you're getting at, but I don't buy it yet.”

So I take all of that, and that's really, really useful to get someone else's feedback. Then what I'll do at that point is I'll take my cards, and I'll start organizing my cards, and sometimes I have to get extra cards. I have to do more research, as my editors pointed out.

Based on this experience of talking through the chapter, of getting feedback on the chapter, now I usually have a pretty good sense of how the chapter is going to work. I have these, let's say, 100 cards. So about half the cards I've discarded because I've realized, oh, that idea doesn't fit in here, that anecdote doesn't work.

So I have about half the cards left, and I and at that point, I start writing the chapter. Sometimes I'll actually go back to my cards as I'm writing the chapter, but the cards, actually at that point, are kind of embedded in my head.

I start writing, and there's oftentimes just as much thinking and work that happens once I start the writing part —

because I have to figure out, like, how do I make this story entertaining? How do I make this idea crisper? How do I make this something that's easy to remember?

At that point, I know where the chapter begins and ends, and I know where it's going to get to in the middle. If I do have a moment of crisis, I have these cards that I can turn to.

You know, what happens after this thing? I can't really remember. Oh, that's right, my card says I go to this thing next. That's how I write a chapter or write out a magazine article.

Joanna: That is fascinating. I know everyone's like, ooh, that is so juicy.

Charles: It's enormously inefficient, but it works.

Joanna: It works for you. Yes, I love that. I think that's really interesting.

Let's get into the book Supercommunicators, which I read on a beach in Corfu this summer and really enjoyed it. It's really about the importance of finding a connection and, obviously, the communication with others.

I was really thinking as I was reading it, I was like, okay, there's a lot of ideas around doing it in person, but for me and my audience, as authors, we primarily communicate online through emails, social media, maybe podcast interviews like this.

Much of our communication is written communication, so I wonder what thoughts you had on doing that?

Charles: Well — 

I think good written prose is a conversation.

One of the core ideas in Supercommunicators is that a conversation is a back and forth. It's you expressing what kind of discussion you want to have, whether it's emotional or social or practical, and me responding to that and matching you, and then inviting you to match me.

When we don't have someone we're talking to face to face—and I think we do this digitally all the time, like we do it through text, and we do it through email, and we do it through DMs.

So let's imagine a situation where I'm writing something and the audience I'm writing it for is not going to get back to me right away. In those situations —

The best writing is me in conversation with that audience, where I'm standing in for the audience.

I'm anticipating their objections. I'm anticipating where they get bored. I'm anticipating their questions. I'm anticipating where they say, “Well, you know, you think you know it all, but here's this other thing.” I'm trying to anticipate all of that because I want this to feel like a conversation.

Oftentimes you start a chapter and you say, here's an idea, here's an argument I'm making. Now you might be saying to yourself, but why? Why is that true? Because there's all these other examples that prove that it's not true. Well, let me explain. That's a really good question.

So oftentimes I'm dialoguing with the audience in the text itself, and you can do that in a non-clumsy way. You know, “This raised the question in the protagonist's mind, so such and such,” because the protagonist is a proxy for the reader.

Every chapter that I write usually has someone in there who is a proxy for the reader.

So as I'm in conversation with that character, or as I'm in conversation with that person, that protagonist, they are asking the questions that I suspect the reader is asking. They are saying the things that I suspect the reader is saying.

Sometimes that protagonist is myself. Sometimes I come in as the author, and I say, “This didn't make any sense to me. I was skeptical,” because I know my audience is skeptical. So I think it's still a conversation, it's just a conversation where we're relying on our intuition about what the other side would say.

Then we're going out and we're testing it. We're asking people to read it, we're asking them to react to it, and we're making edits based on those reactions. That's what an editor does.

Joanna: I guess I'm thinking more of when we put stuff out on our email list or social media. It's interesting because we can anticipate a lot of what people are going to think or say.

From the book there's a great quote,

“Miscommunication occurs when people are having different kinds of conversations.”

At the moment, as we record this towards the end of 2024, obviously in the US and in the UK, we've had elections, and our society is quite fractured.

Miscommunication seems to happen a lot, and many authors are scared of saying the wrong thing, of getting canceled, of trying to communicate but failing.

What are your tips for dealing with this, as someone who does speak to much bigger audiences?

Charles: Well, I think this fear can be a little overblown. I mean, obviously, look, if you go up on a stage and you're talking about Gaza in Israel, and you're taking one side very strongly, you should anticipate that people will react. That people who disagree with you, will let you know they disagree with you.

In my experience, most of the times when we have conversations, first of all, we're often not talking about Gaza and Israel, right. We're talking about what it's like to be a parent or what it's like to be a writer.

Equally, if we are talking about these tough topics, I think the best conversations are ones where someone says, “You know what? I am not certain that I am right about this. I am not certain that I know enough to say this definitively, but let me tell you something that I'm feeling.”

“Let me tell you about something that I'm experiencing, and then I want to create space for you to share with me what you're experiencing and what you're feeling.”

If you go into a conversation, even a charged conversation, about politics, about religion, about race, if you go into it with this attitude of saying, “I'm not going to make grand, sweeping statements about what's right or wrong, I'm going to tell you what I've experienced and what I'm feeling, and I'm going to invite you to do the same.”

“My goal here is to understand you, is to understand how you see the world, and to speak in such a way that you can understand how I see the world.” I think in those conversations, those are not the conversations that end up getting us canceled.

Those are the conversations where everyone walks away saying, “Oh, that's a tough topic, but I feel better about it.” So I don't think it's something people have to be scared about.

If you're issuing polemics, if your goal is not to understand the other side and not to listen, but simply to force them to listen to you, then, yes, they might react negatively. If we're really good communicators, if we're really good writers, that's not our goal. Our goal is not to be a polemicist.

Even George Orwell was not a polemicist that ignored the concerns and feelings of the people he disagreed with.

Good writing, great writing, is writing that invites people who disagree with us into the conversation.

When we feel like we're in that conversation and we feel like we're being listened to, we don't get angry, we feel connected.

Joanna: Yes, and it is that going deeper. Reading those chapters in the book was really interesting.

Another quote here, “Asking deep questions is easier than most people realize, and more rewarding than we expect.” You mention things like emotional things, and this means we have to be vulnerable with other people.

How can we be more vulnerable and more emotional, particularly if we're worried about judgment in conversations?

Charles: Give me an example of being worried about judgment in conversations because I think, actually, most people are not worried about judgment in conversations..

Joanna: Well, I'm obviously British, and I was at a conference in America the week after the US election. I very much felt that I could not mention the situation because of the fear of offending a person, either way, not being too much in favor of whichever president.

So this sort of censorship of what are deeply meaningful things for people, when you're worried about people's judgment or it affecting business or whatever.

Charles: Well, what I would argue is that in that situation, certainly, if you're someone who says, “I hate Donald Trump,” and you go up to an American who has voted for Trump, and you say, “By the way, I hate Donald Trump. You guys are idiots for electing him,” that probably would not be great, but that's not a conversation.

That's not you trying to understand this person and trying to help them understand you. So I think something that would not be particularly scary or inappropriate would be to say, “Hey, you guys just had an election. I'm just wondering, you don't need to tell me who you voted for, but how are you feeling about the election?”

“Like, how are you feeling about what happened? Are you worried for the future? Are you happy about what's happened? What do you make of this?” Nobody's going to mind being asked that question.

What you're not saying is, “Here's my opinion. You have to listen to my opinion. I don't care about your opinion.”

What you're saying is, “I'm actually really curious in your opinion.”

You're an American, and I'm coming from overseas, and I want to know how, as an American, you sort of see this.”

There's this experiment that I do when I'm on a stage talking to an audience, where I ask everyone to turn to the person next to them and ask and answer one question, which is, “When is the last time you cried in front of another person?”

When I introduce this idea, people hate it. They think it's going to be terrible, super awkward. Then we have the conversation, and people love it. They say it's one of the best conversations they've had in the last week.

This has been studied extensively by a guy named Nicholas Epley at the University of Chicago, that people think this conversation, asking this question, is going to be awkward. They think they're not going to enjoy the discussion. They think they're not going to feel close to the person afterwards.

Then once they actually do it because they're forced to by someone on a stage, it's exactly the opposite. It's not awkward at all. They actually are fascinated to hear what the other person has to say. They feel close to them. They feel close to each other.

The thing that stops us, that triggers self-censorship, is an inability to forecast how well asking questions can go.

Now again, back to my polemics point, if you go in and you say, “I'm going to tell you why, as an American, you just chose the worst leader on earth,” then that's probably not going to go over well, but that's not a conversation. That's a polemic.

If you go in and you say, “Look, I want to understand your nation. I want to understand how you see your country. If you don't mind, I'd love to tell you how I see your country,” that back and forth, that's a discussion.

That's not going to result in anyone getting angry at each other. It's going to result in something that feels good and connected.

Joanna: So, really, what you're saying is it's just curiosity.

At heart, it's curiosity about another person and how they're feeling.

And that brings the connection that then can lead to other things.

Charles: It is curiosity, but it's also having the right goals when you open your mouth. Having the right goals when you go into a conversation.

The goal of a conversation is not to convince the other person that you're right and they're wrong, or that you're smart and they're dumb, or that they should like you, or they should admire you.

The goal of a conversation is to understand how someone else sees the world and to speak in such a way that they can understand how you see the world.

Understanding is the goal of a conversation.

When we're focused on that goal, rather than trying to “own the libs” or trying to prove that we're right and they're ignorant, when we're focused on understanding, mutual understanding, it almost always goes well.

Just look at both of our nation's histories. Our proudest moments are not when the entire nation agreed with each other, our proudest moments are when we disagreed with each other, but we felt connected to each other, and we felt unified enough to embrace those disagreements and find a way forward.

Joanna: So you mentioned goals there, and I'm fascinated with goals. Again, we're recording this at the end of 2024. A lot of people will be putting goals together for next year.

You've won a Pulitzer, which is frankly amazing, and many people would say you've hit all the goals that nonfiction authors, journalists, would want to reach. So I wondered—

How has your definition of success changed over the years? Do you still have goals?

Charles: Oh, of course. I mean, my definition of success hasn't really changed very much.

My goal and my definition of success is to write things that are beautiful and true and that people are desperate to finish.

Just because you've written one book that managed to hit that mark, that doesn't mean that you don't want to write more books that hit that mark. It doesn't mean that you don't find new ideas that you think are just as compelling and just as important.

So I've been extraordinarily lucky and enormously thankful for that luck because it's allowed me to afford a life where I can, instead of being a daily newspaper reporter, I can go and I can devote myself to writing things that are longer and harder and, frankly, riskier.

Some of them might not work because audiences might just say, like, I'm not interested. Though that's a means to an end.

The definition of success has always been the same: to write something that captures something true about the world that's interesting, and to write it in a way that you, as the reader, you just can't put it down.

You just can't wait to finish. You can't wait to inhale more of it.

I feel that way about books all the time, and it's just such a wonderful feeling. So that's my goal, to write things that other people feel that way about what I've written.

Joanna: Interesting. Well, then I'm going to come back to what you said at the beginning. So I asked you, why did you get into writing books? And you said, to try and make some money.

Just for people listening because, again, it's very hard to look at someone's career and say, “Oh, I should just do exactly that, and I will make some money.”

What is your advice to authors who want to make money with their books?

Charles: The number one thing I would say is you have to choose topics that have the audience in mind.

I've come up with 20 or 30 book ideas that I thought were just fascinating, and the reason I didn't write them is because I did not think enough other people would think it was fascinating.

If you want to make a living as a writer, you can't indulge just your own interests. You have to be a servant of the reader.

That doesn't mean that we're beholden to the reader.

That doesn't mean that we dumb our things down because we think the reader wants it dumbed down or that we don't investigate avenues that we think might challenge the reader, but at some level, we have to be writing for the reader, as opposed to writing for ourselves.

The bookstores are filled with these beautiful, beautiful novels and beautiful nonfiction books that are so intricate, and so well reported, and so well written, and they're on topics that I just don't care about.

I'm not that interested in the Bhutan Death March, but I am interested in, for instance, cancer. I've worried about cancer, I've lost family members to cancer.

So I'd skip over a book about the Bhutan Death March, even though it's a beautiful book, and I'd pick up The Emperor of All Maladies, a book about the history of cancer, because it's something that speaks to me. So I think authors who think about the reader are authors who end up finding readers.

Joanna: Perfect.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Charles: Absolutely. So they're sold anywhere you buy books. They're on Amazon.com, or Audible if you like audiobooks. They're in your local bookstore, and supporting and celebrating independent bookstores is always important.

If they want to find me, I'm at CharlesDuhigg.com or on all the social media stuff. I'm the only Charles Duhigg on Earth, and so I'm relatively easy to find.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Charles. That was fantastic.

Charles: Thank you.

The post Book Proposals, Writing Non-Fiction, And Supercommunicators With Charles Duhigg first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you build a scalable business around non-fiction books? How can you turn a book into multiple streams of income? How can you delegate in order to scale? Michael Bungay Stanier shares his thoughts.

In the intro, Bookfunnel's Universal Book Links, and How to Write Non-Fiction Second Edition; ALCS survey results of writers on AI, remuneration, transparency and choice; AI Translation is the Game-Changer’s Game-Changer [The New Publishing Standard]

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Michael Bungay Stanier is the bestselling author of five books, with a million copies sold, including The Coaching Habit, How to Begin, and How to Work with (Almost) Anyone. He's also the founder of training and development company Box of Crayons, a podcaster, speaker, and coach.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Michael's publishing journey and why he likes the control of hybrid publishing
• Creating a business ecosystem beyond the book — multiple streams of income
• Tips for successfully delegating in your author business and improving professional relationships
• The challenges of creating a premium print journal
• How journaling can help you figure out what you really want

You can find Michael at MBS.works or BoxofCrayons.com. You can get the journal at DoSomethingJournal.com.

Transript of Interview with Michael Bungay Stanier

Joanna: Michael Bungay Stanier is the bestselling author of five books, with a million copies sold, including The Coaching Habit, How to Begin, and How to Work with (Almost) Anyone. He's also the founder of training and development company Box of Crayons, a podcaster, speaker, and coach. Welcome to the show, Michael.

Michael: Jo, I'm so happy to be here. It was earlier this year that you and I were hanging out in a field together, and this is warmer and less damp, amongst other things.

Joanna: Yes, indeed. We were at The DO Lectures in Wales, which we're going to come back to. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Michael: Well, the seed was planted by having a grandmother who was a writer. So my dad's mum lived in Oxford, England, and she wrote columns for the local newspaper, kind of gossip columns. Her pen name was Culex, which is Latin for mosquito, which I love.

She also wrote kids’ books, and memoirs, and plays, and radio scripts. She was a really prolific writer.

So I think that was probably the early seed, along with my dad being a great storyteller. He would tell stories at night of Sir Michael. I was meeting Sir Nigel, Sir Angus, my two brothers, and we'd head off and have adventures.

So this idea of loving stories and loving writing, I think was planted pretty early on. I found in university and in my first careers after university, I would inevitably end up writing the newsletter. In university, I was part of the law newspaper and the English department newspaper.

Writing and writing and writing has just been part of the practice for a long time.

Which, as you know, is all part of putting in your 10,000 hours, finding your voice, learning how to write a sentence. Starting off copying other people's styles and then trying to find your own style emerging from that.

The first time an actual book idea showed up in my head, and this turned into an actual book that I published called Get Unstuck & Get Going. I had this idea that I thought about coaching, which was a profession I just started in. I was like, you know, there's a way of doing this that can be more efficient than actually having a coach.

I had this idea of like the kids’ flip books, where you have like a ballerina's head and a scuba diver's body and a soccer player's legs, and you kind of combine them into these kind of different combinations. I had this idea that you could create a book with different questions.

So you'd bring a problem to the book, and you'd open it and randomly generate some questions, and voila, you'd have a self-directed coaching practice. So I had this idea, and wrote some stuff up, and went and made some prototypes.

Then I honestly just couldn't figure out how to publish it because no publisher wanted this, and self-publishing felt impossible.

So I kind of put it in a drawer, until my cousin Robert went, “You know that book you were telling me about, this kind of self-coaching book? I noticed you're not doing it, and I was telling my boss about it, and he thought he his company could do it.”

I was like, “Wait, no, what? Ah!” So that was kind of the catalyst to me getting a first book published. After that — 

I just realized that writing books and producing books and getting them out in the world is one of the best expressions of the way I try and serve the world.

Joanna: I love that, and it's a really interesting story. Just give us a sense of the timeline because you said there that self-publishing would be difficult. I mean, self-publishing that kind of book would be difficult. You've got five books now with, I presume, different publishers or self-publishing.

Tell us a bit about that publishing journey and the timeline.

Michael: So, let's see. Get Unstuck & Get Going would have been around about 2006, so before Amazon and others kind of made self-publishing a regular book normal.

Then I self-published another book called Find Your Great Work, and did a print run of like a couple of thousand copies. I was super excited about it. A friend of mine went, “Oh, this is good,” and he sent it to his editor at Workman, which is a New York publishing house. They came back and said they'd like to publish this.

I was like, well, I've already published 2000. They're like, well, soon as those are done, we'll redo this book for you. So in 2010, I think, I published a book with Workman in New York. So that was a regular publishing experience.

Then 2011, I partnered with Seth Godin, who is a marketing blogger, author, general kind of guru guy. He had a year where he partnered with Amazon and produced a book a year through them, only created through Amazon.

I created an anthology called End Malaria. It was pretty exciting, actually. We had like 60 people. They all wrote articles around how to do more great work.

All the money raised from that book, not just the profit, but all the money, all the revenue, went to Malaria No More. We raised $400,000, and we hit number two overall on Amazon.com with that.

Joanna: I should just say on that, I think, well, one, I'm a fan of Seth Godin. I've talked about him a lot on the show, so my listeners know of him.

Also, that's how I think I first heard of you for the first time.

I bought that book, and lots of people bought that book, regardless, but to support that as a charitable work.

Michael: Yes, it was a project I'm very proud of because I was like, oh, this is using what I can do, which is write books which I know a bit about, and connect with people which I know a bit about. With having the partnership with Seth, I'm like maybe we can make something cool happen here.

So the next book wasn't until 2016, but it was my big breakthrough book. It was called The Coaching Habit. It was because I spent four years trying to pitch this book to Workman who published Do More Great Work, as it became called.

They kept turning me down. I kept writing the book and designing the book and writing proposal. I went through probably six or seven iterations of the book. I did a lot of writing, and they kept saying, “Ah, no, it's not quite right. We don't like it. Go back and have another go.”

At a certain point, Jo, I went, “Okay, this is it. This is the book. Take it or leave it.” I was pretty sure that they would take it because by this stage, Do More Great Work had sold maybe 70,000 copies. So that's a pretty good performance, and I was thinking they would bet on the author, but they didn't.

They turned me down. I was affronted and depressed, but at a certain point I was like, there is something here in this book.

I explored what I thought was going to be self-publishing, but emerged into kind of hybrid publishing.

I work with a company called Page Two, and they have this hybrid publishing model which we can dig into.

That came out February 29th, 2016. So February 29th, because I could pick my pub date, and I'm like if this book doesn't sell very many copies, I can say on its first birthday, it sold X number of copies, even though that's a four year stretch. You know, always thinking.

That book just took off. So it sold almost 200,000 copies in its first year. It's sold now probably a million and a half copies. Maybe not quite that much, but kind of getting close to that number.

Four years later, I published a sister book to that, called The Advice Trap, which is a kind of deeper dive into how do you tame your advice monster. So now I was on a roll. I'm like, I've got this thing.

So a book that followed that is called How to Begin, which is about what you do when you hit midlife and you're trying to figure out what you do next. It's how do you find a worthy goal.

Then my most recent book is called How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, which came out, I've lost track now, maybe a year ago, bit over a year ago.

Somewhere in there, there was one other little book that I published, which was like a daily provocation. It's one of those books with 366 pages, each page is a date with a question or a provocation in there.

Joanna: I love that because you've done so many different ways of publishing. Have you done all of the books—the rest of them, the recent ones—with the hybrid publishing?

Michael: I have, yes. Ever since The Coaching Habit, I've just loved this partnership with hybrid publishing. It's a really good model, particularly if there's more to your business than selling books. If your book is often a doorway into other stuff that you do, they're a particularly powerful partnership.

You and I both make a good living through selling books, Jo, but we're in the minority.

Most people don't make a living selling books, so it has to be a book-plus.

What that business model does is give me much more control over my book, without me needing to worry about all the minutiae detail stuff that I'm not good at and not interested in.

It gives me freedom to distribute my books out in the world in a way that can generate bigger returns through my speaking or through my training or through other stuff that I do.

Joanna: I think this is a really important point. I mean, you mentioned there the business beyond the book. So give people a sort of clue as to the other ways that you make money, but also that you have made money, because you're a multi-passionate creative.

You do things that maybe they're kind of project based, and then you move on. I think it's really interesting because a lot of people say, well, you just start doing one thing and that's it, but—

You seem to pivot quite often.

Michael: Yes, some would say multi-passionate creator, other people would say easily distracted.

So I started a training company called Box of Crayons, you mentioned it in the introduction. It sells and licenses the IP that's from The Coaching Habit book and The Advice Trap to big companies. So their clients are people like Microsoft and Salesforce and Gucci, kind of these big name brands.

It's trying to get thousands of people to change their behavior so that when they're leading people, they can be more coach-like and ask better questions.

So I started that company. I still own it with my wife, but luckily, I don't run it anymore.

Four or five years ago, one of the team stepped up to become the CEO. She's so much better at being a CEO than I am. I'm a terrible, terrible CEO.

So that's a multi-million dollar a year company, like $5 million or $6 million in revenue. The profit of that company gets shared a bit with me, and a bit with the people in the company, and a bit reinvested back into the company.

How to Begin, which is the book on setting a worthy goal, a goal that's thrilling, important, and daunting, there's a business model on the back of that which is an online training course for about 50 bucks, I think, or 100 bucks. It's a kind of a deeper dive into that work.

The real economic engine behind there is a membership group called The Conspiracy.

So The Conspiracy is where people come together to do the work and actually make progress on their worthy goal.

Many of us feel that call to do something bigger and braver and bolder than ourselves, but it can be pretty daunting to do it by yourself. So this is a community, an encouragement, and some structure to keep making progress. That's mostly run by a small team of one full-time person and a couple of part-time people.

There's a theme here, Jo, which is that—

I try to start things, and then I try to get out of the way.

Because if I'm running a business, we're in trouble. If other people are running businesses, we've got a chance.

I give speeches, so sometimes webinars from my office, but sometimes I get on a plane and I fly different places to give a speech. The success of The Coaching Habit book means that I am ridiculously well paid for doing that.

Keynote speaking, if you can crack it, is ridiculously lucrative.

If you're Brene Brown, you're charging a quarter of a million dollars to give a talk.

Joanna: Wow.

Michael: Yes, exactly. If you're me, my rack rate, as we call it, is $50,000 to give a speech. Now, that's an enormous number, and it's partly there to have most people go, “That's ridiculous. Why would we pay you that much money?”

That means that I can stay focused on the stuff that I really want to do, which is to create and to write and to build new stuff, rather than be on the road giving speeches. So partly it's to try and make myself inaccessible.

Let's say I give about 10 to 15 speeches a year, and definitely not everybody pays that sort of amount of money, but that's the start of the conversation around that.

Then there's book sales, and working through the hybrid model, you can expect somewhere in the 30% to 40% royalty rate. It's not really a royalty, but in terms of money generated for a book sold, 30% to 40%.

That is roughly three to four times more than you would on a traditional publishing deal, where your royalty rate's more likely to be in and around 10%. It's less than if you just did a straight publishing, uploaded a PDF to the Amazon enterprise and sold ebooks through them.

Joanna: I love this. This is so useful for people, for me and for people listening, because, like we've said, it's about building an ecosystem around your personal brand. This is basically what you have built. Your name is the thing that is, I want to say famous. Your name is what people recognize, and then there's all these other things.

There's a couple of follow up questions. So one is, way back when, did you design this? Like coming out the gate, did you go—I am going to design this ecosystem business around a personal brand?

Or was it just you took opportunities, followed ideas, and there was no potential planning around it?

Michael: Well, ironically, the planning that was there was trying not to build a personal brand.

Joanna: That's really funny.

Michael: The thing is, I would say that my name is largely unknown, as much as it might be.

I mean, for a book that sold a million and a half copies, lots of people who've got their hands on that don't know or haven't really registered the name Michael Bungay Stanier.

Not in the way that like a Dan Pink, or a Susan Cain, or a Brene Brown, or any of these folks are known. In part, that's because when I was building Box of Crayons—and that's the business I spent most of my time building, I spent 17 years working in that business directly.

I was like, the business is called Box of Crayons. It's not called Michael's Training Business because I wanted to make myself redundant as fast as possible. The reason for this, Jo, is kind of a philosophical one and a practical one.

The philosophical one is at the heart of the work I do, it's to invite people to step into the best version of themselves, to kind of take responsibility for their own freedom, to unlock their greatness. Part of the act of doing that is for me to create space for them to do that.

As somebody who got dealt lots of the great cards: straight, white, over educated, English speaking man, blah, blah, blah, I've got a lot to give away. So my job is to get out of the spotlight as much as possible so that other people have an opportunity to step into that space.

Practically, I want to do that because I'm a fundamentally lazy person. It's like things work better when I'm not involved.

I'm trying to build a life where I'm doing the stuff that I'm best at and I love most.

Some version of podcasting, some version of creating, some version of writing, all of those projects get me most excited. So partly, this is trying to find other people to do the work.

Joanna: This is also interesting to me because there are a lot of us who are independent authors who are ‘doers.' You know, we like doing the work, as such.

So you used the word ‘lazy' there. I know other people who use that word, but actually what you are good at is delegating and trusting other people and helping other people be the best they can to run your business for you, or to be your publisher, or whatever. I actually think this is a real trick.

So how can people who are overly doing, and I include myself in that—

How can we delegate more and better, so that we really focus on the things that we are best at or should be doing?

Michael: That's a wonderful question, and honestly, I wish I was a much better delegator than I am. I'm still too much of a meddler, but you're right, I've been practicing for quite a long time to try and make myself better at that.

Partly, it's I'm lucky enough to have a wiring that has me kind of wired to think about what the next thing is, rather than kind of obsessing about what's happening at the moment. So I'm kind of wired to be able to let some stuff go, which helps for sure.

When I stepped aside from being the CEO at Box of Crayons, and Shannon was coming in to take on that role, honestly, she was totally freaking out about it. I wasn't. I was freaking out a little bit, but not really like she was.

She was freaking out because I had hired her from behind the bar of my local pizzeria four years earlier. This is her first job. Now, it's her first job, but I hired her as she was in the tail end of her completing her PhD in literature. She's incredibly smart, and I just went, you have a ton of potential.

Really quickly, it just became obvious to me and the person who was coaching me that maybe this person could be a CEO. So we're like, okay, how do we set you up?

We hired somebody for two years to help us in this transition, a year leading up to Shannon becoming the CEO in a year after it. That was very helpful because that just helped somebody look at the two of us and make sure that we didn't collude in our own destruction.

That's something that can definitely happen because founders are terrible at handing over control, for the most part. The other thing we did, Jo, which was really helpful, is we used the tool that comes from Susan Scott's book called Fierce Conversations.

It's based on a tree metaphor, and it sets out four different levels of decision making. Twig, Branch, Trunk, and Root.

Shannon and I went back and forth to figure out what the decisions were for Box of Crayons.

Now, Twig decisions are decisions that I will never hear of, just never know about. It's just not in my future life will I ever come across what that conversation was about.

Branch decisions are ones that probably I hear about afterwards, either in a conversation with Shannon, or maybe her monthly update to the company, which I'm part of. Those are those decisions. Nothing to do with me, but I'll find out about them.

Trunk decisions, and this is where it starts getting interesting, are decisions for Shannon to make, but for her to talk to me before she makes them.

Then Root decisions are decisions that I get to make as the owner of the company.

Those are categories that are useful for whenever you're looking to delegate to figure out where does the power rest in this decision making. Now for Box of Crayons, where we got to pretty quickly was to realize that actually I only had two decisions, two Root decisions that I could make.

One is, do I sell the company or not? The other was, do I fire Shannon or not? Because in this instance, I wanted this to be Shannon's company that she was running that I happened to be a shareholder in. Not Michael's company that Shannon was managing on my behalf.

It just meant that we came up with a hierarchy around what those decisions are. So that's one tool that helped.

The second tool that helps, and I kind of touched on this actually quite a lot in the book How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, is with most of the people with whom I work—

We have a conversation about how we work best together so that we get what we want.

That doesn't normally happen. You think it would, but most of the time when you start working with somebody, you plunge into the “what” of the work. The doing of it, the stuff that needs to get done, the stuff that needs to get delegated. Here's why we're having the meeting, blah, blah, blah.

What I do with the people with whom I work is I'm like, let me tell you the best experience I've had with when I'm working with somebody like you, in the kind of role you have.

Why don't you tell me the best experience you've had when you're working with somebody in my position, in my role? What's the worst experience that we've had?

What will we do when things get broken? Because they will get broken, everything gets broken in time. The fabric always rips.

So setting up those conversations allows us to get a little clearer about how we best work together, which means that both they and I are more comfortable about what's being delegated.

Joanna: Yes, that's super useful. I think often the conversations—and authors, writers, you know, many of us are far more comfortable writing. So, I mean, people can do a sort of first draft of that in writing, get the ideas down and then talk about it. As you say—

A lot of this is relationships, and that always involves a little bit of having to talk to people.

Michael: Exactly, and it's like you also have to understand what your standards are.

Most of us don't know what good enough looks like, and most of us don't know what excellent looks like. If you don't know it, how on earth can somebody who you're delegating to find the right level on which to perform.

So it's doing your own work to kind of go, look, this is what I mean by getting this done. This is what it looks like. This is what it doesn't look like. It's taken me a long time to learn this, Jo, but —

I've just found that the sooner I can make minor adjustments, kind of lightly tap the tiller, the easier it is for everybody.

So I have an assistant, Claudine, and when something isn't quite as I want it to be with Claudine, I don't hoard it. I don't linger over it. I just ping her a quick note, going, “This, I prefer it to be A, not B,” and she's like, cool, got it. Then she builds it into her process.

Joanna: Yes, that's great. So I wanted to return to your book projects because you have a premium Do Something That Matters Journal coming in 2025. Now, many of us people listening, we do premium print editions of our books, and sprayed edges, and foil, and all this.

We can do we can do anything now. Like pretty much as independents or hybrid as you are, we can do anything. I do know that a journal is tough.

Tell us about your journal. Why do it? What have been some of the challenges?

Michael: Doing a journal is tough.

When I talk to my Page Two folks, the hybrid folks, they're like, whoo, there's a journal mafia out there. I mean, it's relatively easy to create a journal, at least it feels easy compared to writing a “proper book” in inverted commas.

So it can be really tempting to all of us to go, “Look a journal, how hard is it?” It's like, throw down a few questions, have a lot of blank pages, add a ribbon, maybe a bit of an elastic thingy to hold it shut, and you're signaling journal.

If you go onto any of the online retailers, there's a gazillion journals for sale, most of them cheap, shoddy, nasty, underwhelming. So I was like why on Earth would I do a journal?

With almost every single book I create, I get to a place where I'm like, screw it. It doesn't matter if this doesn't sell, this just needs to be created by me.

So I get kind of clear on what success is. Sometimes it's like, you know, it doesn't have to sell that many, I want to get this thing out in the world, and I want it to be created.

So too with this journal. It was like, do I want to do this journal? I've got this idea, I think I know how it might work, and I've got a way of where it connects. It connects to the How to Begin book. So it's part of that ecosystem. So this comes down to understanding what your business and your business ecosystem is.

So, okay, I've got a little marketing machine that is about trying to find people in midlife, trying to figure out what to do. I can sell them the How to Begin book. I can sell them the Do Something That Matters Journal. I can sell them the How to Begin Course. I can sell them The Conspiracy.

There's different ways of bringing people into this ecosystem through these different products that I've created.

The journal is a whole different price point. It's more expensive to create something like this because you're using nicer paper than you would on a regular print book. You've got ribbons. I've got a cloth bound journal with an indented title. So it's all kind of fancy and lovely.

So what made me go yes is, first of all, this is an outcome from my actual journaling practice. I spent 20 years trying to figure out a journaling practice, and this turned out to be helpful for me, and these questions turned out to be helpful for me.

Secondly, it kind of builds on some brand awareness around me, which is that I'm kind of known for asking good questions. This journal not only has regular daily questions that repeat, but it has unique weekly questions that are different over the 18 weeks of this particular journal.

So first of all, it's like, okay, it'll enhance my brand. It's something I will use. So if I don't sell any of these, I've got a lifetime supply of journals. So that'll be fine.

Thirdly, we did a smaller print run than I would normally do. For me, I would normally do an initial print run of a book of around about 20,000 books because I've got The Coaching Habit that continues to sell really well. It sells a couple of thousand copies per week.

It means that I can bet that the rising tide effect will mean that over a lifetime, I should be able to sell 20,000 copies of most of my books. That's the rule of thumb I have.

With this journal, our first print run is 8000 copies. I'd be delighted if I just sell out this first print run, that would be a success for me. Otherwise, it'll be Christmas gifts to everybody I know for the rest of my life.

Joanna: Can I just ask on the product side, because I've looked at this, one of the things is the lie flat.

Does it lie flat?

This is the thing that costs the money, basically. One of the things.

Michael: So mine doesn't lie flat. I don't totally know.

Joanna: As in, do you have to break the spine to lie it flat? Or is it like the Leuchtturm or the Moleskine, where you just open it and it lies flat, basically?

Michael: It has a like, I don't know what the fancy terms are, but it's a hardback. So the spine is a hard ridge.

Joanna: So it's more like a ‘book' book?

Michael: It's more like a book book, but when you open it, you don't have to do anything fancy to be able to write on both sides of the book.

Joanna: Okay. I think this is the interesting thing because different people like different journals. So, for example, I might buy one of those because I want just to see your products and to get your questions, but I may not journal in it. For example, I journal in just a plain other notebook. I use a Leuchtturm.

Michael: Oh, I love Leuchtturms.

Joanna: Yes, I love them too.

The word ‘journal' is, even in itself, an interesting word.

Michael: Right, because there's the Leuchtturm ones where they're really plain, and that's the ones I've used for 10 years. So now I'm moving away from them now with this new journal, or using them differently, at least.

Then you have kind of the planner style journal, which is: write down what you're doing today, write down your top three things, write down your intentions. I mean, it's kind of a more how do I actually hold my universe together.

Then the ones like mine, which is like, here are ways of checking in with yourself. So a little more structured than Julia Cameron's Morning Pages, where you'll just write for three pages or three minutes or something, free flow.

So I'm like, well, this is what's worked for me. It's got the discipline to check in on a daily basis because getting clear every day on what matters most and what you're grateful for and what you're present to, really helps.

You check in on a weekly basis to kind of help you learn and grow and evolve and see the bigger picture.

Joanna: Is that through Page Two? Also, where can people get that?

Michael: It's through Page Two, so that's my hybrid publisher. As you can tell, I love Page Two. I love the expertise of around publishing that they bring, and I love that they understand authors who have a back end.

I love that I get to be in control and make the final decisions on the look and the feel of all the stuff I create because that matters to me.

Joanna: I think it is on Amazon for pre-order. I think that is how I found it.

Michael: It is on Amazon. It's at DoSomethingJournal.com.

Joanna: Fantastic. Okay, so we're almost out of time.

I want to just return to The DO Lectures in Wales, which I'll link to in the show notes. It's very interesting. Let's call it a festival, but it was mostly a festival of ideas. It was full of people looking for a new direction or the next pivot.

You and I were there for different reasons, and I was feeling a need for a pivot. There were lots of people wanting to reinvent themselves.

Now, this is going to come out towards the end of 2024. People moving into 2025, we've got lots of changes in the political things, in AI, and there's so much going on.

If people listening are feeling like a new direction or a new pivot in the new year, what are some of your tips for people?

Michael: I have three suggestions. The first is, a really great question to try and answer every single morning for a period of time is, “what do I want?” It's such a hard question. Oh, man.

It is actually one of the three morning check-in questions that I use as part of this new journal, but you don't need to buy the journal to just use this question. So sitting down with, “what do I want?”

Often when people are at that kind of restlessness, what's becoming clear is what they don't want. I need something to be different, but they haven't yet got a clearer reading, or even started picking up some faint signals around what they do want.

Sit with that. “What do I want? What do I want? What do I want? What do I really want?”

It is hard, but the more you can spend time with that, the greater you're going to find solid earth underneath your feet that will enable you to move and act.

The second question that I think can be really powerful is —

“If I'm going to say yes to this, what must I say no to?”

Most of us, and I include me in this, for sure, we underestimate just how powerful the status quo is. It has a really heavy gravity, and shrugging off the status quo is always harder than you think it is.

When you say no to something, you're actually saying no, most of the time, to someone. Whatever you're thinking as your reinvention, somebody's going to be a bit disappointed in you. They were hoping for more of the same.

So try to figure out what you're going to say yes to, and therefore what you have to say no to. So much of this reinvention process, we add yeses, but we're not brave enough to say no. Your yeses mean nothing unless they come with a no.

The third thing I might suggest is find some people to perhaps do this with, have this conversation with, walk this path with. It can be a coach. It can be an informal gathering of people.

I mean, tomorrow I'm going to a day-long gathering of a brand new mastermind that we're starting up with me and four other people to support each other as we figure out who do we want to be when we grow up. So you don't have to fork out money for this. You can just find your people.

This is an existential question. It's hard to wrestle with existential questions just by yourself, so go find somebody else to walk the path with.

Joanna: That's great advice. I'm definitely thinking about all those things too.

Where can people find you, and your books, and everything you do online?

Michael: The best place to go is probably MBS.works. That is the umbrella website. It points you to social media if you're into that sort of stuff. It points you to all of the books. All of the books have free stuff associated with it, so you can get in there and pillage the free stuff from the books if you'd like to do that as well.

If you have a multi-million dollar budget for corporate training, then you should also go and look at BoxOfCrayons.com, but I suspect there aren't that many of those people listening in here.

Joanna: No, but certainly some people might buy your journal! So that's more the level of us.

Michael: I would be thrilled. As an author, and everybody who's listening knows this already, which is it's nothing but a treat when somebody has the generosity to buy a copy of your book.

I saw a thing on LinkedIn, I think, of somebody going, “The Coaching Habit is my most dog-eared book.” I'm like, oh, my god, that is just the best compliment an author can get.

Joanna: Oh, brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Michael. That was fantastic.

Michael: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Jo.

The post Building A Business Ecosystem Around Non-Fiction Books With Michael Bungay Stanier first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can we write from the perspective of others while still respecting different cultures? How can a children's book author make money from bulk sales? How is self-publishing in South Africa different? With Ashling McCarthy.

In the intro, Spotify for Authors and Katie Cross on self-narration and email marketing; How do I know when to leave my publisher? [Katy Loftus]; and Claude Styles.

Today’s show is sponsored by FindawayVoices by Spotify, the platform for independent authors who want to unlock the world’s largest audiobook platforms. Take your audiobook everywhere to earn everywhere with Findaway Voices by Spotify. Go to findawayvoices.com/penn to publish your next audiobook project.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Ashling McCarthy is a South African author and artist, as well as an anthropologist, graphic designer, and non-profit founder. Her latest book is Down at Jika Jika Tavern, in The Poacher's Moon Crime Series.

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 Ashling's background in anthropology helps in writing books
• How research can help us write from other perspectives
• The importance of empathy when writing “the other”
• Debunking South African stereotypes and tips for visitors
• The book ecosystem in South Africa
• Difficulties of selling direct in different countries
• Marketing your book to schools and creating teaching opportunities

Find out more about Ashling at AshlingMcCarthy.co.za.

Transcript of Interview with Ashling McCarthy

Joanna: Ashling McCarthy is a South African author and artist, as well as an anthropologist, graphic designer, and non-profit founder. Her latest book is Down at Jika Jika Tavern, in The Poacher's Moon Crime Series. So welcome to the show, Ashling.

Ashling: Hi, Joanna. Thanks so much. I'm really looking forward to it.

Joanna: Yes, great. So first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Ashling: Well, writing and publishing has come quite late to me. It wasn't something that I'd ever actually intended on doing. I started off as a graphic designer in South Africa and did a bit of work in the UK, then came home when I was completely homesick.

I got into a really interesting craft development program for people who had a three-year qualification in design, and we would be working with women who lived in rural communities in an area called KwaZulu-Natal, where I live.

As long as you had a three-year design qualification, they'd match you up with women in rural areas who were very skilled at craft. The idea was that then we would work together to match those skills to create high-end product.

So it was really that experience that allowed me to see South Africa in a very different light, and I went on to become an anthropologist and a nonprofit founder. So that took a good probably 15 years of my life and writing a book kind of came out of running the nonprofit.

We're an education nonprofit, and we work with rural schools. So children who go to really poorly resourced schools in rural communities in in South Africa.

I wanted to write a book for the young women in our communities who didn't have any examples of themselves in books.

We would get lots of donations from overseas companies for books, but there was nothing that reflected their lives, their experiences. So I thought, oh, maybe I'll start to write a book that kind of reflects that.

So Down at Jika Jika Tavern is actually the first book in The Poacher's Moon Crime Series. I, last year, published the second book, The Leopard in the Lala.

How that came about, in terms of writing a crime series versus an educational kid’s book, was that my family was very involved in a game farm with wildlife. Just one day I was thinking about the fact that so many people who live on the outskirts of these game farms have no access to them.

So the only chance of them seeing a rhino or an elephant or any other kind of game is from the other side of the fence, and I kind of wondered what that would feel like. So I started to write a story that would bring that to light.

It was during our time on the game farm it was the height of rhino poaching, and we had six rhinos poached over a period of time. I really started to get a feel for what the book would be about because there were so many interesting incidences that took place.

So for example, a traditional healer was arrested on the neighboring game farm for being involved in rhino poaching. I wanted to understand better, why would somebody who effectively has a calling to do good, why would they be involved in such a heinous crime?

We just had so many little interesting things happen that I was able to then weave these real life stories into fiction to better understand why people become involved in rhino poaching and wildlife crime.

Joanna: Yes, because being an anthropologist, I mean, obviously that means you're interested in people and what different people do.

Talk about what the job of an anthropologist is and how much you use from your career in the books. What are some of the interesting anthropological things you weave in? I mean, you mentioned the traditional healer. Like, what are the other things?

Ashling: So I must say, anthropology plays a really big part in my writing. I studied Anthro, got a master's degree in HIV/AIDS and orphan care, and really it was looking at what kind of cultural practices lead to people becoming infected and affected by HIV.

It was really those experiences of understanding how culture can have such a huge impact on the way people respond to certain things.

So now in my books, I mean, obviously, as a South African, we have 11, in fact, now 12 official languages. We are multi-faith, multicultural, so it's very hard to try and tell a story from one perspective.

For me as a white female Christian, how do I write a story that involves many different cultures, different faiths, different belief systems, without it coming across as judgmental or bias?

So I really do use the methodologies that we learnt in Anthropology, of curiosity, listening, observing, and trying to understand somebody's perspective from the world that they've come from without bringing in my own thoughts and feelings about that. So it's really interesting and fascinating.

I think it helps to better understand why people do things. Then we can look at—I mean, obviously we want to end rhino poaching and wildlife crime, but just telling people not to do it isn't good enough. We have to try and help them work with the systems that they have in place that could lead to a reduction in those actions.

Joanna: I love that, and I think that's so good in terms of whatever we're writing, whatever genre, taking the perspective of someone else.

I mean, just your examples there, say poaching and HIV, there are some people who might write a story that's like, “Well, they are evil. They're the criminal. They're the bad person because they did this.” Whereas there are some very logical cultural reasons, like good reasons, why these things happen.

I mean, but re-education and changing people's minds. I mean, even the economics, right? Sometimes this is done because people need it for money to feed their children or something. So this is all so caught up in things that we often just don't know about.

I mean, this is really hard, though. You've spent all these years working with these communities, so you're trying really hard.

For people listening who want to write other perspectives, how can normal people who aren't anthropologists with your background write the other?

How can people really try to get into the mindset of someone who just lives a completely different life to ourselves?

Ashling: I think that's research. I mean, obviously, as I'm writing about poachers, it's very hard to meet a poacher. They're either sitting in prison or they're just totally inaccessible to you. So a lot of research, a lot of interviews, I've read a lot of academic papers.

There's a huge amount of academics that are doing research into wildlife crime and have worked with communities. So I think wherever you can't physically meet somebody, or even if it's online, is to really try and read as much as you can.

Also, find people who are representative. I mean, what I know about a traditional healer, which we call an Izangoma here, I know very little about that.

So I found somebody who I could interview and who explained to me what the perspective of that faith and that calling is, and then why somebody might turn from the calling to do good, to do bad. So I think it really is a lot of research goes into it.

It's not just asking one person. Just because I'm writing about a particular character, and then I interview one person, that's certainly not the perception of a number of people from that culture or that faith.

In anthropology, we call it triangulation. Finding at least three different sources to verify that information.

Joanna: Oh, that's really good. I think that's excellent. As we're recording this, this will go out a bit later, but we're in the last week of the American election. It's just so fascinating to read different perspectives from the polar opposites of a political side of things.

I mean the triangulation in that sense—I know that's not South Africa, but we all have these same things, right—the triangulation is really hard if you have two extremes and a moderate somewhere in the middle. I mean, with some of these, it's very, very hard to get into someone else's perspective.

Is empathy just a big part of it? Like putting aside who you are to try and really listen?

Ashling: Yes, definitely. I think that's probably the biggest thing that I learned from Anthro was empathy and really just sitting with somebody else's life experience.

I mean, you talked about wildlife crime and the economics of it. The fact is that I've worked and been in communities where really the poverty is just horrendous. People have aspirations just like you or I do, and they want their children to have a better life.

So if somebody's being offered their entire year's wages, if not more, for one night to poach a rhino, I mean, very few people would turn that down in order to help their family or to better their family.

Yes, obviously, there is greed and higher syndicates and all of that, but for the average person, or the average poacher who gets involved, I think a better understanding of the other aspects of their life is important.

Joanna: I mean, obviously talking about things like poaching rhinos, I mean this is a normal thing to talk about in South Africa, but most people listening won't have been to South Africa. They might not know much about it. I think some people might even think it's an area of Africa, as opposed to a separate country.

What are the stereotypes about South Africa that annoy you the most, or the most dated things you hear about it?

Ashling: Well, I think South Africa gets a very bad rap in terms of, obviously, crime and corruption, and there is truth in that. I'm very much not looking at the country that I live in with rose tinted spectacles.

Yes, there is crime. Yes, there is corruption, but I absolutely love this country. I have no intention of ever leaving.

I think what's so wonderful about South Africa is the people and how they're so welcoming and kind and empathetic in many ways. We just have kind of a culture of helping one another, of community, of looking out for one another. 

I mean, often when you see videos on TikTok of people mocking South Africa, the first thing that you would notice in the comments is how South Africans, despite race, faith, political agenda, will band together and protect our country to the death. It just really is a country of huge opportunity.

For me, I think it's really changed the way I view the rest of the world. I have lived in the UK. In fact, my older sister lives in the UK. I've got a twin who lives in Hong Kong, and I've visited, obviously, on numerous occasions.

I always feel such a great sense of relief and happiness on getting back into that airport at O.R. Tambo and setting foot on South African soil.

Joanna: That's really great. I worked in Australia in the mining industry with a lot of South Africans, who I guess they must have left in the 90s, which was a different time, obviously. I feel like when people say South Africa, they have Nelson Mandela in their head, which is what, 20 or 30 years ago?

Ashling: Yes, 30 years ago this year.

Joanna: 30 years ago, yes. It's a very, very different time. As you said, I guess the other thing we hear is the crime for travelers. So if people want to travel—

Do you have any tips for people who might want to visit South Africa?

Ashling: Absolutely. Like any country that you visit, there are areas to avoid. There's just the simple rules, like not going into the CBD, the Central Business District, late at night. I mean, there are very clear areas that you shouldn't visit during the evening.

I know everybody loves to flock to Cape Town. Cape Town is amazing. It's beautiful. It's got wine farms. It's got the mountain. Absolutely stunning, but it's quite interesting, a lot of non-Capetonians feel it's a very different experience. Like when I visit there, I always feel like I'm in a slightly international kind of zone.

Areas like where I'm from, Durban, a lot of people bypass Durban because Durban does have a bad rap. It's worth visiting Durban though. I mean, we are two hours away from the mountains. We're two hours away from game reserves. We've got the beach on our doorstep.

My suggestion is to look around at the other places and other locations to visit. There's the Karoo, there's the Kruger National Park, which obviously a lot of international visitors flock to as well.

So I think just do your research and try and get on to maybe some South African groups that can share with you some of the best things to do and maybe some of the places to avoid. There's quite a lot of those websites.

Just thinking about what you were saying about Australians and South Africans in Australia, I think probably the worst ambassadors for South Africa are those that have left. Many have left for good reason, better job opportunities, or maybe have had a traumatic experience in this country and often don't represent us well overseas.

I think to look past that, as that's the same for virtually every country in the world.

There's the good and the bad, and we have to look for the good and explore that.

Joanna: Yes, I totally agree. I mean, obviously there are dangerous places in any country in the world, so I think that's important to stay. Also, I totally agree with you with going home. It's interesting how you talk there about going back.

I mean, I lived in New Zealand and Australia between 2000 and 2011, and you know, there were reasons that I was away. Jonathan, my husband, is a New Zealander, and both of us are so pro the UK. I'm so English now. I feel like I am English, not just UK, but I'm English.

I think going away, like you also lived away, going away and then making the decision to return, it means you make it like an active choice to live in your country. That's huge, isn't it?

Ashling: It's a very, for me, an intentional commitment to the country. Also, I mean, I was born in the very late 70s, so I had 10 years of apartheid South Africa. I understand how privileged our position was at that time, and still is, and wanting to contribute back to the country that allowed me to become the person I am.

That was part of running the nonprofit, was saying there are so many kids out here who deserve better. If I can contribute to that and make something happen there, then I actually owe it to this country.

It's been a very intentional decision to return here and to make the best life possible, not just for myself, but for those around me.

Joanna: So let's come on to the books and publishing side.

Tell us about the book ecosystem in South Africa.

Do people use like Kindle and the Kobo? How do they listen or read? What are print sales like, as well?

Ashling: Yes, Kindle is definitely big here. I still get into arguments with people about Kindle versus physical books, and there's still a lot of people who want to have the book in their hand and smell the paper and all of that. So I would say both are used widely.

I, personally, haven't heard too much about Kobo, but that could just be because I have a Kindle, so I don't listen out for that. Ebooks, as far as I know, it's through Kindle.

I've started looking into, after listening to the talk with yourself and Adam Beswick about selling direct, I didn't realize I could sell ebooks directly from my website. So that's something I'm exploring now as well.

Audiobooks and Audible is very popular here as well. So, yes, I would say there's still a big physical store presence, like to go into a store and buy a physical book. Books on Amazon, yes, downloading ebooks.

To order a physical book on Amazon, the courier fee is very prohibitive to get a physical book from international to South Africa. So that probably isn't too big, but I mean, all the bookstores here sell whatever it is that you are looking for.

Joanna: If somebody wanted to sell their books in a South African bookstore, is it a chain?

Is it mostly independents? Is that something you've looked into, or is it dominated by publishers?

Ashling: So in terms of self-publishing, in order to get your book into big bookstores, like Exclusive Books, or Bargain Books, or whatever it is, you have to work through a distributor. So there are probably about three or four distributors.

The big chains won't deal with you as an independent author. They want to work through the distributor. So the distributor, they read your book, and then they either accept it or reject it. If they accept it onto their list, then you would send your books to them, and then they approach all the big chains.

They also work with schools and other entities, but it has to be done through that distributor. So what that does mean, though, as an independent, I'm still not coming out with a huge amount per book.

The bookstore gets quite a big discount so that they can sell it at your retail price. Then the distributor takes a big chunk of that. Whatever you're left with, then you obviously minus your expenses off of, and you're left with that little amount as a profit.

Joanna: Yes, print books are a very challenging situation. Well, those same chains, do they work across Sub-Saharan Africa in general, or is it like a South African thing specifically?

Ashling: Some of them do. I'm thinking of two very big ones that would probably work in Namibia, Botswana, those countries that are quite close to us, but I don't think through all of Africa.

Joanna: You mentioned earlier that there are 11 or 12 languages just in South Africa, and obviously every other African nation has a whole load more languages. I mean, there's a lot of them.

You're publishing in English. Is that what people usually do, or are there publications in other languages?

Ashling: English and Afrikaans would probably be the two main languages to publish in. There is a push towards indigenous languages, like IsiZulu, isiXhosa, some of those other languages that some authors might want to publish in.

English is taught through in most schools. So, generally, everybody can read English or Afrikaans. Those are the two biggest languages spoken in the country.

Joanna: What about self-publishing in South Africa?

If people listening are in South Africa or they're interested, what are the specific challenges? Are you using exactly the same stuff as I would, or an American would? How does that work?

Ashling: So self-publishing, it hasn't been too difficult in terms of just setting it up. I mean, you get your ISBN from the National Library System.

Then I went straight to Amazon, in terms of wanting to reach an international audience. So I have the physical book and an ebook, so that's not difficult to do.

Now that the payment systems have changed, prior to about a year and a half ago, your payment would have to go through an American bank account. Then you would withdraw that to a South African bank account. Now you can be paid directly from Amazon, which is fantastic.

Then the actual physical books here, I work with a local printer, and I do runs depending on how many books I need. That can be quite costly, obviously, because we're not printing thousands of books, but I'm sure that's the same for print on demand anywhere

I haven't really found anybody yet here who does print on demand to say that I just want 10 books and for it to be cost effective.

So what I do is some of my books I will work through my distributor, and then other books I will have for myself. I do a lot of art shows. If I do a book launch or a talk, I will take books with me and sell directly to the public.

Joanna: You mentioned your online store as well. What have the challenges been with selling direct? A lot of people listening, they're not in the US, they're not in the UK. I mean, even people in Europe are struggling with some of this stuff.

What are some of the difficulties with selling direct?

Ashling: Really, around payment. So, I mean, I'm quite new to this part of trying to reach an international audience outside of Amazon. I wanted to move away from people being able to only buy via them.

So it was interesting, as I said, when I listened to Adam Beswick's talk of how he's doing sales directly from his website, my first challenge there was, well, who am I going to use to print these books? How do they get delivered to people? How do I get paid for that?

I was really trying to work out what is the best platform, and it seems to be somebody like Ingram Spark that can do all of that for you. The distribution, the printing, so I'm looking into that.

Then, you know, if I use a BookFunnel for ebooks, then just ensuring that my website is aligned to BookFunnel's way. It's just trying to work out the technicalities of how these things work together.

I'm very much listening to a lot of your podcasts and trying to learn from what people have already done. I think that's probably the best way to do it is find people who are doing it, and then just email them and ask them and hope that they will email you back.

Joanna: Yes, I think that's a good call. I mean, I'm using Shopify. I think Adam uses Shopify.

Are you using Shopify or an ecosystem like that, or are you trying to do it just straight from your website?

Ashling: So it's straight from my website, which does have an ecommerce platform.

I did speak to my web person about this. Like, should I rather just start a different website? Also on my website, I am an artist, and so it's almost like a multi-disciplinary website. Should I rather have just a website for my books?

She said, well, the issue with that is that you really have so much SEO and traction and articles linked back to your original website. You would lose that when starting a new website.

It's those kind of little things that I obviously wouldn't think about because I'm not a web person, and my tech side is very poor.

I think it's even just finding out those little issues that could kind of create a hassle or an issue as you try and build the book business away from your original author page, or whatever it might be, and then trying to figure out what the solution is for that.

Joanna: It's definitely a challenge. I mean —

My answer on that because, obviously, I have separate websites, is just to put links on the main site pointing at the other site.

Redirection onto another site, and then have call-to-action. So there's ways around that.

The other thing is, like you mentioned Ingram Spark for print books, and I think there's no integration that I know of that will be just one click where they just go straight through to Ingram. So at that site, you'll have to get the orders manually and then load them up separately.

Ashling: Yes, so it's quite challenging. I don't think I had any idea of what lay ahead.

Also, because it happened quite—not suddenly. It took eight years to write the first book, but when you write in the book, you're not thinking about how am I going to get it out into the world? You're just impressed that you actually finished it.

So trying just to work out —

How do I now take this seriously? Because I can't keep writing books if nobody's buying them. I do have to also make a living from what I'm doing.

So something that I am very focused on, and it might not work for everybody, but it certainly does work for me because of the content of my books, is that they are perfect for high school English set works. The content is very relevant to the social, economic, political, conservation challenges faced in South Africa.

I have got the book into two schools, so my marketing focus is actually on books and schools.

Then also the services that can benefit kids in terms of writing. So one school has taken books, and then we've written a teacher's guide and a student workbook, which will be out next year, so then the teacher can really engage with the material.

Then they've asked me to come and do a narrative writing workshop because apparently kids today don't know how to do creative writing because they're always on their phones and they're not actually reading.

How can you create other services that complement your writing and the sale of your books, but actually broadens your income generation strategy.

Joanna: I think that's great. In that way, as much as I love Adam Beswick, I don't think that model is for you.

I think the bulk sales model is for you, and exactly what you're doing in schools.

A few years ago now, I had an interview with David Hendrickson, who has a book about how to get your book in schools. He has a book, How to Get Your Book Into Schools and Double Your Income With Volume Sales. I'll link to that in the show notes, or search the back list for David Hendrickson.

He talks exactly about that. I mean, also Karen Inglis has been on the show talking about books in schools and doing that. As you say, I mean, when you think about the fact that you do have to make a living, you don't want to grind it all out to get a couple of sales on Ingram Spark when it's difficult to do.

Whereas you can sell 50- 100 books into a school and then go and make some income from teaching as well.

So I think that's definitely the way to go.

Ashling: Yes. Even that photo that I sent you of all those books that were going out, I had been very lucky too.

I've been in the nonprofit sector for so long, I also understand the landscape of charity and donation giving, and how corporates in South Africa must give a percentage of their profit to charities in order for their scorecard to be up to date.

I was able to approach a funder, an environmental funder or company, and say to them, “I have these books. Are you interested in encouraging reading in schools, but also working with conservation organizations?”

There are two really big training organizations here for wildlife conservation, and they very happily purchased 250 copies, which then were handed over to those colleges so that their conservation students could read the book and learn about community interaction and how important it is.

That was a great opportunity for me to get my books into those. So I got paid. The company gets what is called an SED certificate.

The organization has a resource that they can use, and that also I can then work with them further going forward, in terms of training, workbooks and workshops. That's a really nice opportunity for both them and for me.

Joanna: I think that's great. Like you say, schools want to do this, and charities want to do this. This bulk sales model, I realize I focus a lot more on the sale to the end customer, but —

This bulk way of book sales, particularly if you have a book for schools, is just brilliant.

So more people should definitely think about that, because as you said, you probably got that money—Did you get the money before you even printed?

Ashling: Yes, I don't print until I get paid.

Joanna: The cash flow situation is just a lot better.

Ashling: Much better. Yes, as you're not seen sitting with boxes and boxes of books and hoping that somebody's going to relieve you of them over time.

Joanna: Exactly. I think this is the thing to think about book sales. I mean, none of those sales of those 250 books, they're not going to appear on any best seller list, but that's not the point. As you said, this is a living for you, so that's what we have to think.

It's bank, not rank.

Ashling: Absolutely.

I'm really not too concerned about being famous, that might have been in the back of my mind at one point, but it's really that I just want people to be reading the books. I specifically want high school kids to read them. I mean, it's written for adults, but it's great for high school.

I love meeting people who've read the book and their minds have shifted. Their mindset has shifted, or their view has shifted on this topic, and they can be a bit more empathetic and kinder. That's really the point of it.

Joanna: Just on marketing. Obviously, we've talked about the schools there, but as you said before, you're also an artist. You have physical art. You mentioned there a bit about SEO.

How are you marketing the books, and also the rest of your business, in South Africa and globally?

Ashling: I'm not very good, I must say, at marketing.

I think I definitely fall into the Gen X of hating self-promotion. I know I should probably be on TikTok and all of those kind of platforms, but I use mainly Instagram. Facebook, I have an author page.

I think that's how my focus on the schools came about, when I realized this is not a strength of mine, of marketing and really posting every single day, and kind of trying to get people to become interested in the book. So actively pursuing schools is one way to get around that.

For art, I will attend art exhibitions. So we have quite a number of them throughout the year, which are like three or four day events which you can attend and have a stall.

I must say though, that art, as much as I enjoy it, it's not my focus anymore. If I have the time to paint, I'll definitely paint. I've realized throughout my entire working career — 

I very much had an approach of trying to run three or four things at one time. Now in my 40s, I realize it's overwhelming. It creates extreme burnout.

Actually, maybe I could just focus on writing. It's what I love doing. With art, so for example with the student workbook, I can illustrate that workbook and use art in that way. It's kind of a complimentary service to the writing and not just always stand alone.

Joanna: I think that's great. I only laughed with what you said about the marketing because pretty much everyone feels that way. I really don't know many people who are like, “Oh, yes. I love marketing, and I'm so good at it.” Not many authors do that. I was going to ask you—

What about the audiobooks?

Ashling: Yes, I am desperately wanting to do an audiobook. It's very expensive here. I don't know if it's hugely expensive on your side. It's definitely something I get asked a lot about.

I think, again, it would complement high school, especially for kids who don't want to read the book, or maybe they have a learning disability or challenge. So, actually, the audiobook would be perfect for them. So I'm in the position right now of going, do I actually just record one with me reading it?

Joanna: Yes, I was going to say exactly that. I mean, I love the South African accent. People listening can hear that you've got a lovely voice. Is your protagonist female?

Ashling: She is a female. My only kind of reticence about doing this is that she, while there are many characters of different races and cultures, she is a black female. I really wanted to have a young black female do the reading of the book.

It's been suggested to me, why don't you just put the first book out and your voice? Then when you are able to pay for a proper recording with a professional narrator, then do that. So I think I might do that just to get it out there.

Joanna: I think that's a really good idea. As you say, the practicality of finding the exact perfect person for that voice, that's going to be really hard. So it's known as just the narrative straight read, the straight read by the author. Quite a lot of people do it.

I'm starting to do it more. I've mainly done my short stories, but I have thought about just doing my novels as well. You don't have to make up voices and things like that, you don't have to do accents. It's just a straight read, as if you were reading it in schools.

Do you do readings in schools already?

Ashling: No, not a lot, not yet. I will be as of next year, as I go into the schools. I do readings at book launches and stuff.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. I think that recording your own audio now, the software to do the mastering and stuff is good. So for people listening, Hindenburg Narrator is the software that I recommend now. It just gives you a one-click output for ACX and Findaway Voices.

So I would agree with people who say to record it yourself. Then if you make enough money, and if you find someone—I mean, maybe in one of these schools you'll find a young black woman who wants to act or wants to get into that. That might also, in itself, be an interesting opportunity.

Ashling: A great opportunity.

Joanna: I'd encourage you with that, and I love your voice. I've always liked the South African accent. Okay, so we are pretty much out of time.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Ashling: Well, if you're South African, you can just pop over to my website, www.AshlingMcCarthy.co.za. Then, for now, I am on Amazon, both Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

I am probably not going to be on Kindle Unlimited for too long because I want to try opening up the ebooks to other platforms as well. So for now, my South African website or Amazon.

Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Ashling. That was great.

Ashling: Thanks, Joanna.

The post Writing The Other And Self-Publishing in South Africa With Ashling McCarthy first appeared on The Creative Penn.

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