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.

How can you manage the competing priorities of an author career? How can you deal with the demons we all have to wrestle with along the way? Tiffany Yates Martin talks about the role of intuition in decision-making, the challenges of feedback and rejection, and the importance of reclaiming creativity during difficult times.

In the intro, Amazon Music Unlimited will now include a free audiobook a month [The Verge]; When to pivot or quit [Self-Publishing Advice]; Thoughts on sunk cost fallacy, and how do you know when things are ending? Are they spiraling up, or down?, Quit: The Power of Knowing When To Walk Away by Annie Duke.

Plus, HarperCollins AI licensing deal [The Verge; The Authors Guild]; and Seahenge is out everywhere, as well as at my store, JFPennBooks.com.

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 

Tiffany Yates Martin is an editor, speaker, and teacher with over 30 years in the publishing industry. She writes contemporary women's fiction as Phoebe Fox, and her latest non-fiction book is The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career.

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

• Overcoming the “writer demons”
• Setting priorities to help manage overwhelm
• Honing into your intuition in relation to your author career
• Distinguishing intuition from hype or peer pressure
• Defining goals that are within your control
• Staying resilient when dealing with feedback and rejection
• Reclaiming your creative spark in difficult times

You can find Tiffany Yates Martin at FoxPrintEditorial.com.

Transcript of Interview with Tiffany Yates Martin

Joanna: Tiffany Yates Martin is an editor, speaker, and teacher with over 30 years in the publishing industry. She writes contemporary women's fiction as Phoebe Fox, and her latest non-fiction book is The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career. So welcome back to the show, Tiffany.

Tiffany: Thanks for having me again, Joanna.

Joanna: So we talked about your background when you were last on the show in April 2022, so today we're going to jump straight into the book. Why did you write this book?

What problems did you see in the author community that led you to want to write about happiness and sustainability?

Tiffany: I know, it's kind of a departure for me. I've spent all these years as an editor working on hard skills, craft skills, and teaching about that. Then I was actually in the middle of writing what was to have been the follow up book to my first, Intuitive Editing, which was a deep dive into character development.

I just kept writing and thinking and talking about these other ideas because I was hearing from a lot of authors that they were feeling overwhelmed by all the changes and the constantly evolving publishing environment.

I think it's a fortunate time to be an author because I think we have the opportunity to have more control and autonomy over our careers. We have more avenues than ever before.

Publishing has become democratized, but that also brings with it a lot of overwhelm.

I was hearing a lot of discouragement, so I started in my blog, where I used to focus a lot on hard skills, I started writing more about this stuff. I just wanted to try to help authors based on what I was hearing and seeing, and they got huge response.

So the character book just kept balking at me, and I finally realized that one of the things I kept talking about in my blog posts was to pay attention to your motivation, to what you want out of your career.

That's the part that we really have control over, is what our day to day life looks like as authors. So I decided to follow my own advice and turn my attentions to the book that really wanted to be written right now, that I felt like authors probably need more than ever.

Joanna: I think that's so important, as much as I'm sure your character book will be amazing if you do do it. I think this is something I felt very much last year, which is the more prescriptive—you call it hard skills there—the prescriptive, “do this, do that.” I mean character development, there's a lot of books on that. Your take would have been different. 

Also similar, my last nonfiction book, Writing the Shadow, it's like the personal stuff, the mindset stuff, the lifestyle stuff, all of that actually is something that AI and the machines can't share. I mean, they can share it, but it's not their experience, whereas it is actually our experience. So I agree, I think that's so important.

Just on that overwhelm and the changes that are going on, what are some of the things that people are saying to you? Because I think that will resonate with people listening as well.

Tiffany: I was startled by how many—particularly in traditional publishing—how many authors were feeling discouraged by what seems to be trends in the industry.

I'm a fan of any kind of publishing path that fits an author, so I'm not slamming on traditional publishing, but advances do seem to be going down, in general. There is a fascination with the debut author.

So if you're not that shiny new thing, I think that it feels as if traditional publishing doesn't help an author build a following and a career over the span of their career in a way that it used to focus on. So it's like, come on, make a big splash with your book, or else they're moving on without you.

As a result of that, a lot of authors—I just talked to one yesterday—are being encouraged to try new genres, to write under a pen name so that you can kind of disown disappointing sales in the past.

Competition is higher than ever.

There's more than two million books published a year. So I think authors are feeling like it's harder and harder to pop out of the slush pile.

Even with indie publishing, with all the opportunity that it offers and the greater autonomy in many areas, there are a lot of different responsibilities authors have to take on.

People who are creative aren't always necessarily intuitively business minded, and that's a whole new skill set you have to learn.

Then running a business in conjunction with running the creative part, which are both, I think, very consuming pursuits, is a lot. We're trying to balance all of that with our lives.

One thing I talk about a lot, and I know you do too, Joanna, is I call them the “writer demons”. It's the things I think writers and creatives have always suffered from keenly. Like imposter syndrome, and competition, and comparison, and procrastination, and self-doubt.

It feels like we open up more space for those with all the other overwhelm going on. So it's kind of a combination of all those things.

Joanna: Just to stay on those demons because you have in the book, one chapter is called,

“When the demons come for you — and they will.”

It made me laugh because I think in my The Successful Author Mindset, I've got a section that says, “If you haven't published yet, don't read this,” which is like, do you really want to know all the things that you might feel later on?

It's interesting, and I can't remember if you have this in the book, but you just mentioned overwhelm. I feel like another one of the demons is overwhelm, in that we struggle with focus and making a choice. Almost part of the problem is authors are trying to do everything, and you literally cannot do everything.

How do we deal with overwhelm in particular?

Tiffany: This is a huge question, and I love it because I think it's really relevant. One of the things I talk about in the book is really defining what drives you as a writer and what you want out of your writing career.

I think a lot of times we go into it just out of sheer love of the written word, and storytelling, and imagination, exploring our imagination. All that's great, but we have to think about what a writing career actually entails because it's a business. So we have to think about what that's going to mean for us as authors.

So I think part of that is setting priorities. I had a friend who we sort of compare notes creatively and in our creative careers. I was really feeling overwhelmed myself. I'm a freelancer, and I'm pretty sure you can relate to this, Joanna, but you build your reputation and your career as a freelancer by being what I call the “yes girl.”

It's very common for me to get overwhelmed and overbooked, and it does become hard to work on things and to give your attention when all you can see is the giant mountain of stuff in front of you you have to do. It's hard to start taking a single step at a time.

So she suggested that I create a priority list, an actual written priority list of what is most important to me in my career. Not a to-do list, but if I had to stack rank the goals that I have, the things I want to devote my daily attention to, the reality of my writing career day by day, what does that look like?

Then when I started to consider what I wanted to say yes to and book myself with, I was able to literally go back to that list and rank it in order of: how important is this to me —

Do I realistically have the bandwidth for this, and is it something that needs to be done imminently?

So that's one way to start.

I do think it's helpful to think of it, especially if you're indie publishing, let's say. With any publishing path, really, there is such a giant pile of things writers are responsible for now.

I think more and more, which is part of that overwhelm, we're not just writing, we're marketing. We have to learn graphic design, and we have to learn legal language to manage our contracts, and we have to worry about every aspect of the publishing process in a way I think authors never had to before.

So I think we just have to figure out how much of that we are comfortable with, what suits our goals, and rest. I don't know if you've read the book by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, but the instinct, at least for me, when I'm overwhelmed, is to work harder, work longer, work more.

Sometimes I think that's counterproductive because we're burning out. We’re depleting all of our resources that we need in order to accomplish those things. So we have to remember to unplug sometimes. What is your advice on this? Because you are one of the busiest people in the industry that I know.

Joanna: It's funny you say that because I don't think I am. I think I just demonstrably have output. On my wall, I have—

“Measure your life by what you create.”

So in terms of my focus every day, that is my focus every day. All those other things, I often will not do them. I just don't do them.

Tiffany: Like what? Do you mean social media?

Joanna: Social media is probably a very, very good example. If Sacha Black's listening, she'll laugh. I did try TikTok. I tried TikTok for like less than 12 hours, and I was like, you know what? No. There's just no place in my life for this.

Things like advertising, I do things in campaigns, so I don't do things all the time. So as we record this, I am just finishing up a Kickstarter, so I have been doing some social media and stuff, but most of the time I don't do that.

I've cut out a lot of things, and one of my tips is having a not-to-do list.

This might help people who can't say no. So for example, and people sometimes think I'm a bit mean for this, but podcasting, one of my rules is if you have fewer than 50 episodes, I won't come on your podcast.

Sometimes I have exceptions, but what I have found is that a lot of podcasts, most podcasts, don't last past 50 episodes. So it's a bit of tough love, but most of them don't last. I've had enough time wasted over the years that I've been like, okay, that's one of my rules. So it's on my not-to-do list.

Another thing on my not to do list is TikTok, for example. There's also particular types of writing. So I think having a not-to-do list can really help.

Let's come to intuition because I feel like intuition is part of this. How do we make a decision as to what we do prioritize, what we do value? So let's just take a step back. Can you talk about how you describe intuition?

How can we tell whether something is intuition or just something we're dreaming about and might be unrealistic?

Tiffany: I think intuition gets confused sometimes with magical thinking or manifesting, and that's not what I mean. I used it in the title of my first book, which was a hard skills book, Intuitive Editing, because it's the approach I take to editing.

Basically what I mean by it in that capacity, is that rather than trying to take some external system of writing and impose it on our writing, which I think is counterproductive and strips the writing of its voice and originality, we have to grow a story from the inside out.

Then if you want to take some of these, many of them wonderful, systems for helping you fine tune and make your story more effective, great. To try to cram what we're doing into a mold, I think takes all the life out of it. That's kind of how I feel about creating a writing career.

It touches on what you were just saying, which I love, which is even in this area of our field, there's a lot of prescriptive advice about you know, here's how you become a best seller, here's how you make six figures as an author. It's all very system-oriented, kind of like these craft systems I'm talking about.

I think writers go into it thinking, okay, I've got to do all those things, check, check, check, so that I can be successful also. We have to do more of what you were just talking about, set up our personal path, our boundaries.

We have to say no to the things that don't suit us, whether or not we're told they are best practices.

First of all, nothing that works for one person is going to work for every person. So if somebody is trying to set something up as the holy grail of “here's the secret sauce,” there is no secret sauce. Also, the secret sauce isn't right for everyone.

I think what we neglect to do as authors is honor ourselves and what we want.

What you just said is so empowering because it's giving ourselves permission to not do things that we don't want to do.

We can't control any outcomes, but what we can control is the day-to-day experience of being an author and building a writing career, and that's your main source of fulfillment and satisfaction and joy that's going to allow you to weather all these hard parts of publishing that are not within your control.

So I'm with you. I sort of only moderately enjoy social media, so I sort of only moderately do it. I'm aware that I'm building a business, so my intuition is to do things that are more organic marketing. I really like talking to people. I love conversations like this with you. I love teaching.

I love writing my blog it turns out. I did that because, like everyone else, I'm like, “You should start a blog to create more followers.” Then it turned out it was really a wonderful way for me to help create community and to start exploring some of these ideas that weren't necessarily in the purview of what I was known for doing.

So intuitively, I have been creating a career where I say all the time, that my worst day at work is still a really good day. I'm not always waiting for some holy grail that I'm trying to attain that may or may not happen. I'm enjoying what I'm doing right now.

Joanna: Yes, I agree with that. You used the word love when it comes to things like the blogging and talking and teaching and things. The word love, of course, is an emotional word, and I'm sure you don't love everything all the time.

Tiffany: I don't love everyone all the time, Joanna!

Joanna: No, exactly. I think partly, to me, the—

Intuition does come from some kind of emotional feeling.

Like, I like using TikTok (as an example) because I feel like some people absolutely love it and some people hate it. I tried it, and I just had almost a visceral (negative) reaction. I just don't do video.

You and I, we're not on video right now. I don't know whether it's because I'm an introvert and highly sensitive, but the visual field, when it's doing a lot of things, is just too much for me.

I don't consume video, so I don't really make video. I do it sometimes, but very rarely. So why would I even try a video platform?

Now, I have, and I do have some YouTube videos and blah, blah, blah. The point is, I don't love it, so I can never, ever sustain that. Whereas this show, in fact, I'm just about to record my 10 million downloads episode.

Tiffany: Congratulations.

Joanna: Thank you. This will go out after that, so people can listen to that a few shows ago. Essentially, when I started this podcast in 2009, podcasting wasn't even a thing, but I intuitively felt that I should try it. So I tried it, and then I enjoyed it. Like we're having this conversation and we've talked before, this is great.

We're enjoying this, even though it's also “marketing”, in inverted commas. So I was like, I tried something, I liked it, I continued doing it, and here we are 15 years later, whatever, still podcasting. That only happens because I intuitively started and then enjoyed the process.

It's like you say, you can't think of an outcome of 10 million downloads. That's just impossible. You just have to start and go in a direction.

How would you advise people tap into that emotion? Because the problem with that also is that sometimes you go to a conference and there's all this hype about something, or you get caught up in some hype and you do it.

How do you know when it's hype or that you really should give it a go?

Tiffany: I just wrote a post about this obliquely, and that it's very easy to market a dream to people who want it desperately. The whole first section of the new book is called Foundations, and this is kind of the core of it. I think we have to define why we went into this in the first place.

You have to stay in touch with that initial drive to be a writer because that's the engine for your entire career.

For most of us, I don't think it was that we wanted to be rich and famous. If it was, allow Joanna and I to disabuse you of that notion right now. If you don't already know, the odds against that are enormous.

You wouldn't go into any other career where you had, what is it, I don't even know the statistics, but it's something like less than a 3% chance, or even less, of making millions. Even becoming a full time writer, making all of your income from your work, is dauntingly rare, but we go into this anyway.

We have to remember why it matters that much to chase after something so unlikely. That's the thing that's going to start to build that resilience in all of us as creatives. Then, as I said, you have to define what you actually want out of this.

When you're defining your goals, try not to make them things that are outcomes that you cannot control.

If we are in this business because we want to be a New York Times bestseller and nothing else will make us happy, then the chances are phenomenal that we will never be happy at what we do because most authors are not going to become New York Times bestsellers. It's the harsh reality.

We have to understand and accept the realities of the business so that we can stay in touch with why it's still worth pursuing for us.

There's a question I ask in the book that I've used. I started as an actor, and then I was a journalist, and I wrote fiction. As you said, I haven't been doing that lately because I identify primarily as an editor.

Every time I'm sort of evaluating where I am in my career, what I want intuitively, I ask myself: if somebody told me right now that I would never hit the heights, the greatest heights to which one might achieve in this field, would I still want to do it?

Asking myself that was the reason I eventually left acting. It was one of the reasons I stopped writing fiction. Every time I ask myself that as an editor, the answer is, hell yeah, I would still do it. I love it every day. I do use the word a lot.

You say it's an emotional word, this is an emotional business.

We're not in this for logical reasons most of the time. We're in it because it feeds something in us, in our souls.

And that is emotional, I think. So, yes, I love my daily job, and I don't want to do anything else. Even if someone said, “You've peaked, baby. This is the best it's ever going to get.” I'm happy, and I think that is what we have to find a way to get in touch with.

Otherwise, everybody says you have to develop resilience in this field and persistence, but that's the ingredient. The main ingredient of that resilience is finding the satisfaction in what is within your control to affect.

Joanna: Yes, it's interesting. I've also been reflecting on this around persistence and resilience. Somebody said to me, “Oh, you've got so much discipline.” I'm like, I have no discipline.

I don't have discipline. I don't need discipline to do this job because I love what I do.

Same as you, right?

It's interesting, you talked about moving on from acting and let's just say you're not in a fiction phase right now, because that may or may not come back to you. I feel like we're writers partly because we almost have no choice. Once you tap into that vein of creativity, whatever that is, you can't stop doing it.

It's like even if nobody reads the damn story, or nobody buys the book or whatever, you're going to continue. I was thinking about this with the podcast, given the reflection on the downloads and things, at some point I will stop podcasting. I can see an end to me podcasting, but I can't see an end to me writing.

I feel like that's actually something I could do for the rest of my life, you know, right up until I die. PD James, wonderful British writer, she was still working on a manuscript when she died at like 94, I think she was.

In fact, I have so many quotes on my wall, and I have a quote on my wall by a horror author called Adam Nevill, and it says,

“If you are gifted with an imagination, it must be used.” — Adam Nevill

I feel like that just gives me permission, and people listening and yourself permission.

We have an imagination, and I used to think everybody had what we have, but they don't. They really don't. People don't live with all these things in their head that they want to write on the page. They just don't, but we do. I mean, almost part of it is—

Once you tap into this [writing life], do you even have a choice, even if there is no reward?

Tiffany: I mean, it's kind of a basic instinct, I think, especially for those who are called to do this. Do you want to set yourself up to dread and hate and get burned out on the thing that nourishes you so much?

I feel like if we're just a little kinder to ourselves, give ourselves more grace, and give ourselves more agency in how we spend our days pursuing this thing we want, that's how you sustain it until you're 94 years old, writing your last book right before you die.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. Okay, so you used the word “kinder” then, and so I want to come onto this feedback section of the book.

Being kind to ourselves is all very well, and self-love is great and everything, but you have this thing about feedback. It encompasses writing feedback, rejection, criticism, and also the crickets when nobody responds to an email or query, or nobody buy your buys your book, and nobody even cares. I feel like this is the opposite side to the whole “love side” of things.

What are your tips for resilience when it comes to feedback?

Even if we intuitively reject it, because that can actually happen as well, how do we become better writers as well?

Tiffany: I love that you make the point that I probably should have clarified. I do have a lot of positive regard for this field, but let us not downplay how difficult and challenging and just downright painful many aspects of it can be. This is probably prime among them, rejection. It's really hard, and criticism is tough.

You just recently wrote about this I think, Joanna, about getting back your notes from your editor, and how you always just kind of have to take a beat with it. I do think we have to be gentle with ourselves.

The first thing I tell authors when I return an editorial letter, and mine tend to be pretty meaty, so I mean, I just wrote one that was 10,000 words, just to give you an idea, on top of all the comments.

I tell them, draw a bath, pour yourself a glass of wine, take a moment to be in the right headspace to hear all the things that may not be as effective on the page as you hoped they would be.

I think that's one critical distinction, is that good critique is not commenting on you or your talent or the worth of the story. It's simply reflecting what is on the page and whether it's coming across in a way that is conveying your vision as effectively as possible for the reader.

Again, this is a subjective thing. That's another thing to remember is that all criticism, all critique, is subjective. I include mine as a professional editor, or any professional editor, I include agents, publishers, and every single reader who leaves a review.

Everyone feels how they feel about a story, and everyone is affected by something different. So remembering that can be helpful. Good critique is also not personal. I make a distinction in the book between three different kinds of feedback: commentary, criticism, and critique.

Criticism is my least favorite kind, and that's just basically unhelpful negative feedback about your writing. Like, “This isn't working. I hate this character,” things like that. First of all, it's very daunting to hear that, and it's hard to take it in in a way that allows you, as the author, to do something constructive with it.

Second, it is the criticizer, let's say, the critic, who is simply offering their judgment, their assessment, which is personal and doesn't necessarily help you.

Then there's commentary, which you get a lot in critique groups, which is stuff like, “Well, you know what you should do,” or, “This actually happened to me, and let me tell you how it really would look.” That's somebody telling you prescriptively how they would do something that is also not helpful.

Critique is that thing that simply holds up the mirror and reflects what that hopefully educated critiquer is seeing in your story, and is able to do so in a way that says, “Here is where I was pulled out of the story for this specific reason, and here are some ways you could address it,” not prescriptively, like, “What she should do is.”

For example, a good piece of critique would be something like, “I didn't understand the character's motivation in this scene, so I felt a little bit uninvested in her. It would help if we understood why she wants him to do so-and-so, and maybe that's simply her telling him, or maybe it's giving us a glimpse of her inner life.”

I'm giving some suggestions, but I'm not saying how to do it. Now, we don't always get that. So you have to become your own advocate in many ways in this career, but this is one of them.

You're great at this, I think, Joanna. You take in the feedback, and you determine what resonates for me and the story I'm trying to tell and what isn't right for my intentions. So you take what is helpful to you, and you disregard what isn't, and then you just leave it behind you and not let it continue to percolate.

I do want to talk about rejection too, but I want first to ask if you can weigh in on this as well, because I know you're very experienced at handling critique.

Joanna: Well —

To me, it's always been worth paying for a professional editor.

[You can find a list of editors here.]

I have never been in a book group or a writing group because I want somebody who knows what their job is.

So you're a professional editor. You like editing. You know what the job of an editor is. Now, I do think finding an editor is a bit like dating, as in you might not find the right person for you at one point in your life. I think you also, when you grow as a writer, you might need a different editor.

So I think that that is important. Now I work with Kristen Tate at The Blue Garret, and she's been on the show talking about editing, and helps me a lot. So I do think the intuition comes back in with when I get the feedback, sometimes I ignore it.

Like you say, I don't take every single piece of feedback from Kristen and put that into action, but it usually is 80 to 90%. If I'm really reacting to it, it's like, well, why am I reacting so hard? Is that a good reason? As in, do I just feel like, no, that's really important? Or is it a more of an ego reason?

To me, the main thing with editing, like professional feedback, when it comes to someone who is trying to make your work better, is turning yourself into a reader rather than the writer.

It's all about making the book the best it can be for the person who's going to read it.

I think there's such a precious moment when an editor reads your book for the first time because you're never going to have that time again, that first sort of feeling of the manuscript. So it's important to take that feedback seriously because that's the experience the reader's going to have.

They are coming to this cold. They don't know what this is going to be. So, yes, I definitely take feedback from a professional editor differently to a one star review on Amazon, or “You're just a boring person and just a crap writer.” I'm like, okay, whatever.

You mentioned you wanted to talk about rejection.

Tiffany: Yes, especially if you're trying to pursue a traditional path, that's a pretty big part of it.

You're going to get a lot more rejection than acceptance, and that's a good reality to accept when you're going into this career.

Again, you have to learn not to take it personally, first of all.

Let me tell you, having been an actor, there is no rejection like the rejection of somebody staring at your face and going, “Thank you,” in the middle of what you're saying. So I feel, in some ways, very lucky to have started that way because you can take anything after that.

It still hurts to get back even a form letter that says no thanks, if you get anything at all. So I think you have to find ways to keep it in perspective, for starters. If you're getting a form letter, keep in mind you are one of likely hundreds of submissions they're trying to read through on the slush pile.

They may not have made it past the first page or paragraph. They may have read a little more, and it's just not right for them, for what they represent, for what the market is buying right now. They may like it, but they don't love it. You want a champion who loves it, so be glad in that case.

It is like dating because you don't want to go out with someone who doesn't really think you're all that. Also, you understand when you're dating that it's going to take a long time for most of us to find the person you really want to commit to.

We tend to lose sight of that because we set our sights on, “Oh, but this is the perfect agent for me. This is the perfect date for me. This is my perfect spouse.” We have decided that based on really nothing. We have to understand that it has to be the right fit, just like with an editor.

When you get those rejections, find ways to lighten the blow.

I made poetry out of mine. I included some in the book because the form letters, especially, they're very funny to me because every agent, every publisher, is hoping as hard as you are that you're the one.

So they're not in the business of crushing dreams. They don't want to do that. So a lot of these form letters are really nice, but they're really generic. They will say things that are almost like haiku. “We admire this work greatly and feel that your talent will find the right home, but sadly, it is not for us at this time.”

This just began to strike me as hilarious, so I put it in poetry form, and I put them up on my wall, and it helped. I also started making kind of a contest out of it. It took me 113 queries to get my first agent. It took us two books and three rounds of submissions to get a publisher for it.

So I think if you go back to what we were talking about earlier, you develop that resilience and persistence. It's also helpful in the rejection arena or the crickets arena, which can be even harder because it's almost like you're invisible or you don't matter.

Again, that's just a function of the industry.

Agents and publishers, they are buried. You think you're overwhelmed? They are too.

They're just trying to keep their head above water, and sometimes that means they can't even acknowledge. So don't take it personally.

If that's really hurtful to you, maybe that's not the right person for you anyway. So take it as you're one step closer to finding the person who is.

Joanna: Yes, and get back to writing, I think that's the other thing. Like everyone, I have a bit of a slump after finishing a book project because you're empty, you've emptied yourself into the book, and I start to kind of mope around. I'm like, what am I doing? What should I do? Then in the end, some idea pops into my head.

I started writing this short story called Seahenge over the weekend because I was just in such a bad mood. I was like, why am I in such a bad mood?

Seahenge is out now in ebook and audio, narrated by me!

I was just kind of waiting around for the Kickstarter to finish. I do have this book with an agent. I was like, why is everything so slow?

I just started writing another story, and now I'm happy again.

Tiffany: It's kind of nice. It takes the pressure off. With this one launching now, I have the same thing. It opens up an empty space, but I always see that as, first of all, rest, because you know how hard it is to launch a book.

Then, freedom. Now I get to pick anything that I want to work on. What could that be next? I always think that's a happy time.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. Now, there may be people listening who are struggling with that creative spark. I think sometimes it's easier to find than others. You do talk about reclaiming the creative spark in troubled times.

I mean, right now, you just look at the news and there's extreme weather, and hurricanes, and political upheaval, and war. Also, the creative community is being ripped apart by divisions over AI.

I wonder if you can help us to navigate reclaiming that creative spark in difficult times.

Tiffany: Well, you left out plague, which we also had!

Joanna: I'd forgotten that now. That didn't happen!

Tiffany: It'll be back, don't worry. So I think that was sort of the genesis of thinking about a lot of this for me, was when COVID happened, I was hearing from so many authors that they couldn't write.

Not just because of time and all the unrest we had then, and they were so busy making their sourdough starters, but because there was so much mental unrest and uncertainty and fear and distractions at home that you never had before for lot of us, or isolation you never had before.

So that was actually when I started doing online teaching. The first course I ever created was called “How to Train Your Editor Brain”. I was telling authors that just because you're not feeling like you can create right now, that doesn't mean you cannot be creative.

I am a big advocate that one of the greatest things you can do for your own writing is to analyze other people's stories because you have the built in objectivity with those that you don't in your own stories. So it lets you see the inner workings of it in a way that I think it's hard to pick apart our own.

So you're watching something, and you can follow back your own. You know, what were we doing during the plague? We were lying on the sofa, binge watching stuff.

I created this course that that showed authors how to watch analytically, like an editor. That is something you can do for your creativity, whether you're able to create or not, and not feel that you are no longer a creator. Plus you're resting, and I cannot overstate the importance of that.

There is a great value in our writing, I think, in using it in leaning into those feelings. I mean, first of all, a lot of us start writing, why? Because we want to escape something, the real world. We want to create an ideal world we love. We want to work through our emotions, anything painful or uncomfortable.

We want to learn what we think about things. We want to share our beliefs about things. All of that, especially in troubled times, I think can be your engine.

Allison Winn Scotch is a bestselling author that I've worked with in the past, and she had a book called Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing about a female politician. It was inspired by her frustration and fear about the political situation, and just the global unrest we've been having, and the polarization.

I think she told me that she wrote that book in something like six weeks, that it just poured out of her. She took all of those feelings, fears, fury that she was feeling, and put it into this story. So that's one thing you can do with it.

The other thing is to remember the power of your story.

I think, for me, some of the most impactful moments I've had as an artist have been when a single individual said something to me, like one lady said, “Your books helped me get through chemo.” I don't know of any greater reward than something like that.

It helps other people process pain. It connects us. It helps people make sense of what seems senseless.

It can give voice to the voiceless. It creates hope for people. It can change the world.

This is not a dumb story, but it's so kind of pop culture-y that I tell it all the time. It is established that the show Will and Grace was a huge part of the reason that marriage equality passed in the Supreme Court.

It brought “the other”, for many people, into their living rooms in a way that broke down those barriers and misunderstandings and preconceptions people may have had about the LGBTQ community. So it enhanced acceptance.

I hate to use this word because it implies abnormal, but it normalized it for people in a way that influenced the law and civil rights. That's astonishingly powerful.

I don't know if that's helpful for people when they're in the middle of all that unrest, but for me, it does hold out a little bit of a beacon. I dedicated Intuitive Editing to the storytellers who illuminate the world, and I believe that.

Joanna: Yes, I guess to come back to the intuition, if the spark is anger or a cause that you have or something in your own life, but to let those sparks ignite and follow those sparks. Even if people say to you, “Oh, that's a dead genre,” or, “That's not going to sell to anyone,” or, “That's just not going to make any impact on anything.”

Tiffany: Or, “You can't write about that.” Do you want to write safe or not?

Joanna: So, really, do write those things that keep at you. I would say even if you don't know how long it'll take to resonate with people. So coming back to my book Writing the Shadow, I've been kind of working on an idea for that for like 20-odd years, and it took a long time to write.

I know that it's not for most people most of the time, but when people are ready for that book, then it makes a difference.

Tiffany: It was important to you to write it, obviously, that you persisted for two decades to do it, which is the inherent reward of it to me. Like that's the thing that makes that worthwhile for you as an author.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. So it's quite interesting how these things develop. We're out of time—

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

Tiffany: The best place for it all is FoxPrint Editorial. That's my website. Writer's Digest has named it one of the best websites for authors. It's full of resources for authors, many of them free. Downloadable guides, recommendations. I've got my blog on there that's full of like tips on craft and writing life.

The book links are there, but you can buy them anywhere you buy books. Then I also have online classes. Those are paid, but I keep them very low priced. Pretty much everything else on there is free and designed to just help authors write better.

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

Tiffany: Thank you so much, Joanna.

Takeaways

• Authors are feeling overwhelmed by the changing publishing landscape.
• It's important to define what drives you as a writer.
• Setting priorities can help manage overwhelm.
• The creative process is both a business and an art.
• Intuition plays a crucial role in decision-making for authors.
• Resilience comes from finding satisfaction in what you can control.
• Not all advice fits every author; personal paths are essential.
• The emotional aspect of writing is significant for fulfillment.
• It's vital to remember why you started writing in the first place.
• Imagination is a gift that must be used. Self-kindness is essential for sustaining a writing career.
• Feedback can be painful, but it is a tool for growth.
• Good critique reflects the story, not the author's worth.
• Rejection is a common part of the writing journey.
• Finding the right editor is crucial for development.
• Writers should analyze stories to enhance their creativity.
• Creativity can thrive even in troubled times.
• Writing can be a means to process emotions and experiences.
• Stories have the power to change perspectives and society.
• Persistence in writing leads to eventual success.

The post The Intuitive Author With Tiffany Yates Martin first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you write memoir with deep sensory detail? How does terroir in wine equate to the writer's voice? How can you manage your online presence while still protecting yourself from the haters? Multi-award-winning wine writer Natalie MacLean shares her tips.

In the intro, initial thoughts on Author Nation 2024, photos from Death Valley @jfpennauthor, Folk horror on The Nightmare Engine Podcast, Walking the Camino de Santiago on the Action Packed Travel Podcast; Introversion and writing the shadow on The Quiet and Strong Podcast.

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 

Natalie MacLean is a multi-award-winning wine writer, named World's Best Drinks Writer at The World Food Media Awards, as well as a sommelier, TV wine expert, and host of The Unreserved Wine Talk Podcast. She's also the bestselling author of multiple nonfiction books on wine, including Unquenchable, named as one of Amazon's best books of the year. Her latest book is Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much.

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

• Challenges of writing memoir compared to journalistic writing
• Using memoir to tell your Truth
• Tips for sensory writing from a ‘super taster'
• What is terroir and how to use it in your writing
• Maintaining boundaries while still marketing your author brand
• Dealing with crisis management and managing your mental health
• How to reach and engage with book clubs
• Connecting multiple streams of income
• Utilising podcasting for book marketing in your author business

You can find Natalie at NatalieMaclean.com.

Transcript of Interview with Natalie Maclean

Joanna: Natalie MacLean is a multi-award-winning wine writer, named World's Best Drinks Writer at The World Food Media Awards, as well as a sommelier, TV wine expert, and host of The Unreserved Wine Talk Podcast. She's also the bestselling author of multiple nonfiction books on wine, including Unquenchable, named as one of Amazon's best books of the year.

Her latest book is Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much. So welcome to the show, Natalie.

Natalie: It is so good to be back here with you. We've had an initial chat on my podcast [about biodynamic wine and Blood Vintage], but I am so looking forward to this, Jo.

Joanna: Oh, yes. So first up, just—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Natalie: Sure. So my career path was probably like a lot of folks. I didn't plan to be a writer. I didn't have the confidence to be a writer. I was brought up by a single mom, single parent mom. She was a school teacher, so she really pounded it into me, make sure you get an education that will get you a job.

So I wanted to study English, but no, no. So it was PR and an MBA, and right into the workforce in high tech marketing.

Along the way, I was working for a super computer company that was based in Mountain View, California. I'm Canadian, and I still live here, but the head office was down where the campus of Google now is.

So I started arranging all of my meetings there when I had to go on Fridays so I could stay over the weekend and drive up to Napa and Sonoma. While I didn't have time to learn golf or pottery or anything else, I was dining out a lot with clients or whatever. So I really grew to love wine. So that sparked my interest in wine.

Then while I was off on maternity leave, I thought, well, I have to keep my brain active somehow. I had taken a sommelier course just for fun because that's what type As do. It was a good thing I wasn't taking golf lessons because, you know, long iron clubs and type A, that's just not a good combination. So wine worked.

So while I was off on maternity leave, I pitched the editor of a local food magazine because I noticed they had all these gorgeous recipes, but no wine content. I knew just enough about wine to be a little dangerous.

She said, yes, okay, have you published before? I said yes, praying that she would not ask me to send samples because all I had was my high school newspaper. So she gave me a chance.

The first article or column was “How to Find Wine Food Pairings on the Internet.” That was the headline back then, it's gotten much more specific since. That led to a regular column, which gave me the confidence just to cold call other editors.

Then I started landing columns in some of our national newspapers here in Canada and magazines. I didn't know anybody. I was a nobody from nowhere who made a career out of nothing.

I loved it so much that by the time my maternity leave was over, which is generous here in Canada, was almost a year, I decided not to go back. I had found something that really sparked a passion.

Wine gave me the confidence to write. I had a hook.

Otherwise I would have never thought someone's going to pay me to write. Also, I could be home with my son. So it just all worked, and that's kind of how it came together.

Joanna: Just on that, should we just be clear that you were not swigging bottles of wine during your maternity!

Natalie: Yes. No need to call child services. Mommy doesn't drink while she's pregnant. I had finished the sommelier course while I was pregnant. In all seriousness, I never took a drop, and that remains the health guidance.

There are a lot of tips in my book about cutting back on drinking. I didn't mean to write a self-help book, but it kind of turned into that for some people. Definitely, no, I was not swigging. I was not giving my little guy Pinot Noir early on.

Wine just touched all my senses. I often say you could do a liberal arts degree with wine as the hub because it ties to all facets of human endeavor. History, art, religion, commerce, science, war, politics. So it just fascinated me, beyond the buzz of it.

Joanna: Oh, and let's add dating and sex to the list.

Natalie: Oh yes, absolutely. There's a reason why it's a better social lubricant than, say, orange juice.

Joanna: Absolutely. That's fantastic. Then, again, just so people know, when was that? It wasn't like last year.

How long have you now been doing this?

Natalie: So my son was born at the end of '98, and so it's been 25 years. It's been a time.

Joanna: I think that's really important because what you just described there, starting out and having nothing, and now you're multi-award-winning. I mean, you are so super successful. I think some people forget the journey, and they just kind of see you now.

I mean, I'm not as lauded as you are at all, but people look at how many books I've written, for example, and they're like, how did you do that? I'm like, well, it's 16 years of doing this. So that's the thing, isn't it? It's year after year, and—

You've just added to it year after year.

Natalie: Yes, and you just keep plugging away at it, and the adage is compare and despair. The mistake that I used to make is I'm comparing my sort of back end—I know what's going on in my life—to somebody else's front end, which looks amazing. Like if you ever look at Instagram, everybody's life's perfect.

You don't see what goes on behind the scenes or how long it took them to get there. You also don't see that for every win, whether it's a book published or an award or whatever, there's like 76 losses or no’s from editors or whatever. It's just going up to bat over and over and over and keeping going.

Joanna: I think what's interesting about your writing is, obviously, you still write about wine and food pairings on your website, but also for loads of other places. You do reviews, you do articles on wine, but Wine Witch on Fire and some of your other books are much more personal.

What are the challenges of writing memoir compared to your more journalistic writing?

Natalie: So I've always written from a first person perspective. I like to be conversational. Memoir is a whole, as you know, Jo, is a whole other animal from nonfiction, and even from fiction.

Memoir does share so many techniques of fiction. I had to learn a new genre of writing, really. That's how it felt. I had to learn about plot, and setting, and character, and conflict, and themes, and all the rest of it, and dual timelines.

All of this I did not have to do when writing a straightforward nonfiction book about wine or travel. It was so complex, and yet that's what also made it exhilarating.

Memoir is a true account, or at least the way you understand the truth of what happened in your life, but you have all these other techniques. It's a mountain to climb, but it's definitely doable, but again, you have to keep at it.

I took all kinds of online courses. I started listening to your podcast, which has been immensely helpful. So that's one set of challenges.

Then with memoir, if you're writing about anything juicy, it's probably something bad that happened to you because no one wants to write about “here's my perfect life, and it all turned out nicely.”

So, of course, I write about my no good, terrible, very bad vintage, personally and professionally, in Wine Witch. To do that —

You really have to dig into your own dirt, and be honest, be vulnerable, but also, in a sense, you have to relive what you went through.

They've done MRI scans on the brains of people who've been through a traumatic car crash, survived, but then they read them the script of what happened during that car crash. The same areas of the brain are lighting up. So you're not remembering it, you're reliving it.

So that is another challenge of memoir. You're going to have to go back into those scenes of your own life and really relive them if you want to tell it in full detail.

Joanna: You mentioned there how you understand the truth. I get quite obsessed around the word truth, as in truth with a capital T versus the small t. There are some things that obviously happened or didn't happen, but how we write about it in memoir is how we see it, and other people can see it in quite a different way.

So the example being, you and I have both had relationship breakups. I'm sure everyone has, but divorce, particularly. Divorce, I always think of it as a good example. My parents are divorced. My husband's parents were divorced.

Divorce from two different perspectives, it's such a different thing. If both partners wrote a memoir, it would be completely different from their perspective. So what are your recommendations to people listening, when—

You're trying to tell the ‘truth,' but also to realize it's not the only truth.

Natalie: So you can always put that caveat up front, the author's note that says, “This is how I understand what happened. It's my story, my story alone. It's not someone else's story.” Even though other people may come into your story in order for you to tell your story, you have to stick to your story.

So if there are parts about somebody else's life that really don't play a role in you telling your story, leave it out. Let them tell their story if they want to in their own memoir. Stick to your own story.

The other thing that I had to do was, you know, competitiveness and perfectionism are kind of the two snakes in my life. As I say, one is a cobra that will bite you. The other is a boa constrictor that will squeeze the life out of you. So I'm dealing with that all the time, trying to, during this memoir, get past that.

So showing my flaws, all my flaws. I think it's only in being very honest with yourself, and on the page, that anyone's going to relate to you.

For me, a memoir is not exactly what you did and what happened to you, because your story is going to be so different from anybody else's, but what you did with it, how you recovered from it, and so on. It's what people can take away from that story.

So just to wrap this up, I always tried to be harder on myself than anyone else, questioning myself, my own motives and so on. As opposed to a memoir never works if it's a revenge book or if you're tilting the story some way. Readers are too smart, and it serves no one, including the author.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. It can be like legally difficult, and it's not your therapy. You have to be past therapy.

I wanted to come back to something else. So you're a sommelier and you're a super taster, which I discovered when I read your memoir. This fascinates me because I'm very visual in my writing. In my mind's eye, I see the thing play out, and then I write what I see. So I'll often use the language I see.

Other people obviously hear. Taste is literally something I always forgot in books, and smell I forgot in books. Then with COVID, I lost a lot of what I even had left, and it never really came back.

Yo're a super taster. What are your tips on sensory writing?

I mean, you write about wine over and over and over again. You must have such a range of sensory details because otherwise it would get quite repetitive. So what are your tips for doing this? What is the world like when you are a super taster?

Natalie: Wow, I must say, I read Blood Vintage, as you know, Jo, and I think your sensory detail was amazing. Not just the visual, but the smell and the taste. I thought you did a great job.

Joanna: Thank you.

Natalie: So you've mastered that. So I'll answer the last question first. As a super taster, it just means you're very hyperaware of your sensory environment. I got tested in California by a master of wine. He actually measured my taste buds.

25% of the population are super tasters, and most of them tend to be women. We don't know if that's evolution because we were the ones cooking or tasting the berries before giving them to the children. Or we may just we're more practiced in it today, sensing and sniffing and perfume and all the rest of it.

It was Dr. Linda Bartoshuk at Yale University of Medicine who discovered the phenomenon. She said super tasters live in a hyper sensory world. It's like having 500 fingers rather than 10, or a hyper-neon world. It's a lot of fun, Jo.

Joanna: Sounds overwhelming.

Natalie: It is. It is. Why do I drink? Why did I used to overdrink? It's noticing everything. Without my telling him, the master of wine who tested me, he said, “I'll bet you, you remove your tags from your clothing. You don't like zippers. You have thermostat wars with your family.”

I'm thinking, that's just creepy that he's so right on. So it's just a matter of noticing, over-noticing.

So that leads me to the answer to your question, how do you get better at sensory detail?

Start noticing everything. Slow down and pay attention.

You do not have to be a super taster, you can be a super noticer, though.

I teach online food and wine pairing classes, and one of the first things we talk about is pay attention to everything in your life. So when you cut open a vegetable or a fruit, that's when it's most pungent. Smell it, taste it. Put that into your mind, give it a name, say it out loud, you'll remember it better doing it that way.

We live in a very visual culture, but we've forgotten our sense of smell. It's kind of downgraded. There was a study of graduate students, and they said, which sense would you give up for your smartphone? It was smell. We know that loss of smell can lead to depression and all sorts of things.

So notice everything in your life. I even tell them, sniff the leather furniture in your living room, just don't let anyone catch you doing it. So notice everything and then start naming it, and you will develop a vocabulary that you can call on in your writing or when you're tasting wine or whatever.

Notice differences. The other thing we do is we don't taste one wine alone. We'll put them side by side or have a flight of wines, and notice the differences. Hey, that one smells different. Why? Again, it's just about paying attention.

It's like when a movie critic goes to a movie, they don't just sit back. They've got their notes. They're making notes on plot and narrative. Just pay attention, and you'll open up your world, your vocabulary, and I think your writing.

Joanna: I think it's being more specific in our writing.

So for example—and a lot of writers get this wrong—they might say it smelled of apples, let's say. Whereas if you were tasting a wine, I presume you would say, like a Granny Smith apple, or Golden Delicious, or whatever you have in Canada.

Natalie: Exactly. “After a spring rain, and the orchard manager had an argument with his daughter.” No, I wouldn't go on that way, but you're right. Specificity, isn't that what writing's about? Like getting more and more specific so people can paint that picture in their mind of where you are and what you're talking about.

Joanna: Absolutely. So another thing that I love from the book is terroir, which we talked about a lot when I came on your show, and in Blood Vintage it's very important. I feel like it's a word that's thrown around a lot, but that perhaps some people don't know what it means. So why is that important for wine?

Also in your book, I love that you compared that to the author's voice.

Why make the comparison to author's voice? Tell us about terroir.

Natalie: Yes, thank you. There's a wine label at the beginning of the book that kind of sets up for the contents of the book, The Memoir Domaine MacLean, and then I talk about terroir.

For me, terroir in the wine world means it's a magical combination of like soil, geography, climate, weather, the decisions the winemaker makes, all of these different influences that come together to create the final taste of the wine.

I think we do it as writers. The parallel would be our word choice, like our point of view, our humor, our dialogue. All those different techniques come together to form your voice.

We often hear in courses or rejection letters, you know, “I want to hear your voice. What is your writer's voice?” I think it's all of those things that are working together and that are uniquely you.

If you picked up a book and it didn't have your name on it, or an essay, someone would know it's you. Just like someone would know this wine is definitely a Pinot Noir from California. It isn't from Burgundy. We could get even more specific than that, but that's basically how I think about it.

Joanna: Yes, I think one of the issues with a lot of teaching of writing is that often we have to self-edit. Obviously, we believe in editing, and we believe in working with editors as well.

Often when you're editing, I feel like there's something in your brain that says, “Oh, that's too me, like I should be more professional in my writing,” or, “I shouldn't say that because it's too colloquial.”

Often those are the things that actually emerge as your voice, that make you not like everyone else.

Natalie: Exactly. I like puns, even though they're supposedly the lowest form of humor, lowest intellectual form of humor. So you learn to not overdo it so that it's not one big groaner, but let a little through if that's who you are.

In the wine world, I stopped capitalizing words like Pinot Noir and Cabernet, and it was like a shock, or using contractions. Wine writing could be very stiff and jargony, but I wanted to make it conversational. So it's all those little, tiny touches along the way.

Again, it's a sense of vulnerability, of being okay to show yourself to the world. As I say these days, everyone knows everything about everyone anyway. So why not show them the parts you want without harshly editing yourself. They're going to find out some bits and bobs anyway, so why not welcome them in?

Joanna: Yes, and again, that's a longer term thing. In fact, I was talking to an early stage writer the other day, and she said, “Oh, I just won't put stuff about me online.” I was like, if you want a career this way, it's actually impossible, a long-term career. You just can't keep yourself away from everybody entirely.

I mean, you have to have your boundaries clearly, but you just can't stay completely separate. So if you're open from the beginning, then that's all good.

Natalie: For better or worse, we are all brands, as authors, as business owners, if you self-publish, or even traditional.

People want to know the person behind the book.

I keep dragging this back to wine, just because it's what I do, but when people present a bottle of wine, whether it's at a dinner party or they're asking for recommendation in a restaurant, we're fascinated by if there's a story with that bottle.

Every bottle has a story, every book has a story, but it's the person behind the bottle. Did they struggle and live in a van for seven years, and then they finally got a break, and they got a high score from a famous critic, or whatever. We want to know who made this. Where did it come from?

We don't want generic wines any more than we want completely AI written books.

It's just there's no human touch. We want to see who's behind the books and the bottles.

Joanna: Which is why I think memoir is even more important than ever. When I think about the writers whose memoir I've read, I feel like I know them as a person far more.

Whereas, to be honest, I read fiction every day—well, every night I read fiction before I go to bed—and yes, there are some writers who I follow in other ways, but most of them, I just want to read the story. I just want the book.

With a lot of nonfiction, it's I just want the information. So I think there is a difference. Memoir is the most personal of genres, really, which is why it's so challenging, but—

Memoir is also the most important for standing out.

Natalie: Absolutely, yes. You've got to be all in. So it's the most challenging, the most scary, and the most rewarding, I think, can be, for the reader and the writer, but you have to be all in. You can't just hedge it a little bit, and I'll tell this little bit, but I want to edit out that.

Joanna: Yes, that's true. Now, of course, so talking about putting ourselves out there, one of the things that authors are most scared of is being attacked online, being canceled. The negative side of being out there, of putting your head up above the parapet and getting shot at.

This happened to you in this terrible way. The book goes into it in more detail. So just briefly explain what happened. Also, more importantly—

How did you deal with it in those months of crisis management, practically and also with your mental health?

Natalie: I didn't deal with it that well at first. So what happened, just to summarize without going down a rabbit hole, is that this happened 10 years ago, but I do think the issues are even more relevant today.

This was in the heyday of aggregators, Huffington Post, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. I was looking at different sites, and there were a few wine sites quoting my wine reviews. They had invited me to be part of their website, but I declined because I had my own website.

So I noticed, okay, they're quoting my wine reviews. Why are they doing that? Then I realized they were quoting my reviews from our provincial liquor store, which is government owned. So I thought, well, that must be okay. Wrong.

So I started quoting all the reviews from the liquor board because I thought, oh, that will give my readers more context. So I'll have my review, and then I will have it clearly separated that this is a different review from another writer, just like rotten tomatoes will gather movie critic reviews.

That lit a bonfire, and allegations of copyright infringement or misattribution, all the rest of it. So I did get legal help. I sorted it all out. In the end, I was within the bounds of what we call fair dealing in Canada. It's fair use in the United States, in terms of what you can quote and how much you can quote.

In terms of dealing with it at the time, it just kind of hit me like a Mack truck out of the blue. At that time it was just before Christmas, it's a lovely Nightmare Before Christmas holiday feel bad story. No, it has a happy ending.

At the time, I thought strength meant dealing with it myself, independently, and not dragging friends and family into this mess that was happening online. I thought, I can handle it. I went for a week without telling anyone what was happening.

I was just watching these nasty streams of social media and all the rest of it happening online, in the wine world, admittedly. Still, in my world, it was a tsunami. In that time, it was about 11 days, I lost nine pounds, and subsequently I developed a heart murmur.

So people say sticks and stones will break my bones, you know, whatever, it's just the internet turn it off. But if you live online, or make your earning online, as we do, if we have online businesses, you can no more turn it off than a surgeon can operate outside the hospital.

Day after day, I drank the venom, and that was a mistake.

So the first thing was leaning on friends and family and bringing them in. Admitting this awful thing has happened.

Yes, I'm involved and partially responsible for not communicating better and what happened. I thought it would just be an exercise in shame, but what it turned out to be was an exercise in strength. That my friends and family were there to help me, to support me.

My hot buttons, what triggered me online, weren't their hot buttons. So they didn't care if so and so was saying whatever, they were there for me. It was such a relief. It was just a psychic relief.

Then dealing with the crisis, you have to do the things you need to do. I got legal advice. Originally, I was enrolled in the combined business program law degree. I dropped law and just finished the MBA, but I sure got my law degree in the end by the end of it.

In terms of copyright, invasion of privacy, suing for defamation, all the rest of it. All those issues that writers worry about, I took a crash course. So I got really solid legal advice.

Then I took steps after that to address what the people were saying online, but at a certain point you also have to stop responding. You have to block and walk. Block them, then walk and ignore them. As tempting as it is, even though what they're saying is “ugh,” stop reading it.

You've done what you can do, then you need to remove yourself. Or it's just going to take all of your creative energy out of you, and it will have a physical impact in many cases.

Joanna: I mean, for people listening, unfortunately, this is something that happened to you. You did make a mistake, but as you said, it was not legally a mistake. The reaction happened, and all that happened to you, and now I think people are like, well, why would I ever do this?

Why didn't you, at that point, give up? You're a highly educated, intelligent woman. You could have got a job again doing something else.

Why didn't you walk away from the whole thing?

Natalie: Well, first of all, I'm very stubborn. Second of all, I'm a collapsed Catholic. So I believe in suffering makes you stronger. Beyond that, I did ask friends and family. I had some conversations saying, should I just go back to high tech marketing? But I left high tech marketing because there was so much sexism.

Then I land here, it's like, oh dear, I just left Brave New World, this high tech world, move fast, break things, and stumbled into Downton Abbey. There's a different brand, a different blend of sexism here.

One friend asked me, well, you know, you love what you do, you've worked at it now for—at that time—13, 14 years. Are you sure you want to walk away from that and go back to a corporate job?

I thought, God, no, that's not me. I'm too feral for an office. I just love what I do, so why wouldn't I continue?

It was very scary because at the time when you're in the middle of a maelstrom, you don't know what's going to happen. You can't see the future. You don't know if you're going to get sued or something's going to happen. You have to take a breath, come back, lean on friends and family advice.

I was in counseling at the time. I remain in counseling. I'm a big proponent of therapy. You have to get back to, why did I do this in the first place? Why did I start writing about wine?

I love writing, and I love the sensory engagement that wine brings me. So has that changed? No. So why should I leave even though it feels like it might be safer at the time, but it's not.

Joanna: I mean, it's not at all what you went through, but several times over the last few years, I've attracted the hate for my stance on AI. I have at several times said to Jonathan, my husband, I think I'm just quitting the whole thing. I mean, screw this.

Then, as you say, the part of the community that are like, “No, this is valuable, and we want this,” it becomes part of why you stay. Also, as you said, I love what I do as well. I love writing books, but I also like technology and learning things. So why should you give up?

Also, people forget, right? So this is the more relevant question for people listening. How are things for you now?

How do you protect yourself and potentially try and stop these things from happening?

Natalie: Well, I'm so glad you do what you do, Jo. I mean, I just love following you all about AI. Unfortunately, those of us who are on this planet today evolved from probably the most paranoid ancestors who were always searching the environment for what's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong.

So that's our negative bent because that's what helped us stay alive and procreate. So we are the progeny of the most worried people on the planet.

So we're going to notice the naysayers and the negativity, but you have to kind of, again, step back after you block and walk, and realize there's just so much more positivity. There's so many more supporters.

So in terms of now, I've had the benefit of this has been a decade since this happened.

As the memoirist Glennon Doyle said, “Write from a scar, not an open wound.”

My family at the time said, “Well, okay, you've done the healing. Why would you bother to write about this? Aren't you just opening the scar?”

Well, I always loved Sean Thomas Dougherty, an Irish poet who said, “Why bother to write about it? Because there is someone, somewhere, right now who has a wound in the exact shape of your words,” which I love. So that's why I shared the story, but that's why I'm also able to share the story.

I've had the telescoping of time, the lens, to pull back and to make the reflections on what happened 10 years ago from a place of being healed, so it feels safe. It's those reflections that are useful to readers. So no one wants a misery dump for a memoir.

They want to know not just what you did, but what you did with it, so that they can apply that to their lives if they're in a professional crisis or a personal meltdown with a relationship. So that's why I'm able to do it now.

Then in terms of safeguarding my health, well, I work out with a fabulous trainer. You recommended him to me, I love him.

Joanna: Yes, even though I'm in the UK and you're in Canada, we have the same personal trainer.

Natalie: We do. I do it remotely. Obviously, I'm not flying over to Bath once a week. I learned to say Bath correctly, too, on the last podcast. So physical health, exercise, sleep, diet, but also mental health.

I continue in therapy. I love it. We're never finished with who we are.

Also, just the safeguards I put for myself online. A lot of blocking, a lot of deleting comments, whatever, because that's your daily mental stream that's in there. So you have to protect it.

Joanna: Well, another tip for people. For a while, I outsourced my inbox because I just couldn't do it. I get a lot of email, and at the time, I was getting a lot of email that I didn't want to see, and it was hurting my brain.

For about a year, I did outsource my inbox, and then that person triaged and then sent me the emails that were nice or that I could respond to. So that actually helped. I think perhaps that's a crisis management tip. I don't use that anymore. After a while, that kind of died down, and so I was able to take it back.

I mean, you're on TV, and you're visible, and you're on social media. I mean—

You've set your boundaries, so you only share certain things. Give some advice around that.

Natalie: Sure, so when I go on TV, it's all about wine and fast food, or wine and Turkey for holiday dinners. It's pretty happy topics, other than when I was talking about my book, which does, again, have a lot of humor. I'm painting it as this really dark story.

In terms of boundaries, I am public, I am out there. The memoir is very personal, but it's what I've chosen, where my boundaries are. In the memoir, I did change the names of my family because I wanted to protect their privacy.

Sure, someone who's really diligent can Google and try to figure out who everybody is. So I have set up those boundaries.

Just a side note that writers might like to hear on this bit about changing names—at first, I didn't want to use the real names for all of the trolls online. So I changed all their names because I thought, don't give trolls oxygen in your book.

Then once one of the lawyers read the book, he said, “Well, you know that if you quote what they're saying from statements online and you use a pseudonym, you're violating the copyright.”

Then by the end of writing the book, I came to the full, deeply peaceful conclusion that they deserved full credit for what they did and said, so I used their real names.

Joanna: I love that. That's great.

Natalie: So that's basically what I do, is try to have some boundaries. I don't expose where I live or real names of my family. There are just some things that just are good safety protocols.

Joanna: So another thing I wanted to ask you about was you sent me this extraordinary book club guide. It's got wine pairings for the book, and it's 54 pages. When you sent it to me, I thought, oh, I'll just open this, I'm sure it's just a list of questions.

That is what I do for book clubs, which is, “Oh, here's 20 questions that you might like to explore.” You do that, but you've basically written a whole book for a book club, and this fascinates me.

What are your tips for engaging with book clubs, and how do you reach them?

Because you clearly didn't make this for no reason.

Natalie: The evolution of that was at the end of each chapter in the memoir I was recommending wines that kind of tied into the themes. For two reasons, my editor and I decided to eliminate that and put it into this book club guide.

One was, are you down and depressed and getting divorced? Here's a wine for that. It's like, okay, that's not the message that I want to send. The other thing is, it became too long. So 54 pages, 13,000 words in this little book club guide, we removed that because the length of the book was too long.

So it comes in at 75,000, which is a typical soft paperback at 300 pages, I think it is, or just under. So that made it the right length. So that's where this first developed. I didn't sit down to write a 54-page book club guide.

It worked as a standalone, I think, because it does go chapter by chapter. It gives you a wine, it asks you chapter-specific questions, but I tried to go beyond that because, again, a memoir should be relevant to the reader. It should get them talking about their own lives and what they can draw from the book.

So it asks questions like, do you feel that wine is marketed to women differently from men? How do you feel about your own relationship with alcohol? Did it change during the pandemic?

So these are all questions that can spark discussion for book clubs, especially when members don't read the books, which I've heard happens sometimes.

Also, it was interesting because it came back to me through people emailing and direct messaging that like a husband and wife or husband-husband, wife-wife, would read it together and use the book club guide as a way to talk about those issues between them.

Also daughters and mothers and so on, of drinking age, were using it in that way. So I thought that's great. So the marketing to the book clubs has been mainly through the front and back pages, or front and back matter, as we call it.

So at the beginning of the book there is a QR code and a URL, that if you scan it, it will take you right to the book club guide. So that's WineWitchOnFire.com/guide, and then it's there again at the back of the book. So that's the greatest marketing that I did for this book club guide.

Of course, you're collecting email addresses. They can unsubscribe anytime they want, but that's how I heard from a lot of people. Then I also put at the back of the book, you know, “Email me if you've spotted a typo or just want to ask a question.”

Like, there weren't a lot of typos, but I know people love to email about typos, so I got a lot of emails that way. I'm just trying to seek out engagement with my readers because I want to take them on the journey with me.

I'm not as prolific as you are, Joo, but I do believe that one of the key success factors for marketing any book is an email list. I'm on social media, but the majority of my effort is through my email newsletter because you've got that one-to-one conversation, not on rented land, as we all say.

That's been the major thing. Now, when I hear there's a book club reading my book, I'll offer to go on Zoom and join their meeting. I get a lot of book club members who read the book on their own and then recommend it for their book club, just because it has such a big discussion potential.

Then they discover there's a book club guide that will help them not only organize the discussion, but also the wine tasting. Which is, again, the reason why a lot of clubs meet in first place.

Joanna: I think that's genius, and I think we should all try a bit harder, I think. I certainly felt like, oh, I should try harder with that. I've tried to go to a book club, but I just couldn't get involved with that. I'm not a very groupy type person. So I think because I haven't been part of them, I haven't paid enough attention. Reading your guide, I was like, okay, this is great.

Natalie: Thank you. Book clubs aren't for everyone, but if anybody's listening that does interact with a lot of book clubs, I would love to hear their suggestions. For my next book, I do want to write a book that's specifically for book clubs, but I'm still trying to get my head around it, you know, with wines to taste.

Most book clubs are very proprietary as to which books they choose to read. So I'm trying to think, well, where would a book for book clubs that's recommending wines and maybe some books on the side, where would that fit in?

Anyway, so that's just an open invitation. If anyone wants to contact me at [email protected], I'd love to hear your suggestions.

Joanna: I think that's great. I wanted to just move into the business side for a minute. You mentioned that you're not as prolific as me. I don't think that's true because you write freelance articles, you write for your website every day. In terms of number of words written, I think you outstrip me like a lot.

Natalie: I definitely out drink you

Joanna: You have a business around writing and wine, so it's not just the book.

Talk us through your multiple streams of income

Because I think that's really interesting.

Natalie: So the first one would be online wine and food pairing classes. So at NatalieMaclean.com you can find the wine and food pairing classes I offer. I have an in depth course. Food seems to be less intimidating for people to get to know than wine. You know, a chicken is a chicken. It doesn't have a vintage chart, whatever.

So I bring people in that way, but also those who know a lot about wine, sommeliers and so on, also take the course. A lot of sommelier courses and so on, surprisingly, don't have a heavy food and wine pairing element to it.

It's just a lot of fun, and people get to know each other from around the world. So that's stream number one.

Stream number two is subscriptions to my wine reviews. So every two weeks, there's a new batch of 100 wines that come out in our liquor stores here. Our provincial liquor store is the second largest purchaser of wine in the world. So it's a huge chain.

So a lot of the reviews are relevant to other regions, countries, and so on. I review wines from all over the planet. That'd be number two.

Number three is advertising on the website.

The books. What else? I get paid some honorariums for TV appearances, some not. Then I also do speaking.

Lately, it's been a run of teachers organizations wanting me to speak to them. My mom was a teacher for 32 years. My grandmother was an English teacher. I taught Highland dancing. So I'm loving these groups.

It's a variety of topics, from marketing wine to women, to make your dumpster fire your superpower, getting stronger through resilience after you've struggled through something, all those kind of topics.

Joanna: I mean, this is so important because nonfiction books, in particular, having an ecosystem around the book is where you can make more money. Then just finally, you've got your Unreserved Wine Talk Podcast. I've been on that talking about Blood Vintage, which was great. I know how much work podcasting is—

Why did you start your show, and how does podcasting fit into your book marketing and your business?

Natalie: I am a listener first. In fact, I don't know if I've read a physical book for a long time. Even when you sent me the PDF, I put it up into Adobe and got it to read it to me. That's how I consumed Blood Vintage. So I'm listening to podcasts all the time. I listen to audio books. I'm an audible learner, audio learner.

Even before the rise of podcasts, I had a short wave satellite radio, and I would listen to the BBC at night because that's when the reception was best. These voices, these lovely British voices, would sweep in and out over the ocean, depending on how clear the night was. I loved listening to those.

Perhaps it goes back to when my mom used to read me stories at night, and just hearing her voice read The Wizard of Oz, and putting my hand on her forearm and feeling her strength, and the words were in the air, and then coming into me. I love all that. I love audio.

So I decided to start the podcast in—well, I actually made a few attempts in 2008, but the technology just confounded me. Then I started officially near the end of 2018 and got it up and running.

It was an excuse for me to be nosy and ask impertinent questions to people in the wine world, people connected to the wine world. It's not just winemakers. I interview authors like you, but they tend to be wine authors. Sommeliers, cheese people, chefs, anybody, but it's all about the storytelling.

So it's very much similar to what I do with my books. It allows me entry into someone else's life to ask the questions that I hope that my listeners/readers would want to ask but might be too afraid to or don't have access to this person. That's what I'm trying to do on Unreserved Wine Talk.

Joanna: People who think about starting a podcast, it's like, does it help me sell books? Does it promote my brand? Does it make me money? Because it is a lot of work, or you might pay other people to do that for you.

Does the podcast fit business-wise, as well?

Natalie: I think it does. There's a bit of irrationality, like I love to do it, so I'm going to do it. I do think that it is like having a 100-hour conversation with someone. They get to know you pretty well because I don't just launch into the interview.

There's always a preamble where I'm talking about something, perhaps more personally, like you do. I love those bits and pieces. What's happening in your life makes me feel connected, makes me feel like I really do know you, Jo. I think people love that, like it's very intimate.

So the business case though, I know that I have purchased online courses after consuming hundreds of episodes of somebody's podcast. While I don't have sophisticated enough tracking, I do believe in the power of podcasting. Not only is it intimate, but the stats are amazing.

People will listen to you for 30, 45 minutes, sometimes longer. Whereas it's considered a win on Facebook or YouTube to get a 5-10 second watch of a video. I mean, it's just so engaged. It's an engaging medium.

Those long term, deeply committed listeners are often also long term committed readers.

Whether they're reading a physical book or listening to it. So I do think there's quite an overlap, and I hope that the tools get better for measuring it.

Joanna: Yes. I mean, I think there will never ever be tools for podcast listeners conversion because, as you say, someone who maybe has listened for months doesn't buy anything, and then one day they will when they're ready.

Or I have people come back now, people will be like, “Oh, you're still here. You're still podcasting. I listened to you like five years ago. Then I gave up on my book, and now I'm writing it again.” So they've come back. I think for both of us, I think podcasting is very valuable. Insane, Nat, we're out of time.

Where can people find you, and your books, and your podcasts online?

Natalie: So you can find me at NatalieMaclean.com or WineWitchOnFire.com will take you to NatalieMaclean.com. Then I'm on all the social media channels with my name, but my primary hub is NatalieMaclean.com. You can get that book club, that reader guide, at WineWitchOnFire.com.

Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Natalie. That was great.

Natalie: Cheers, Jo. I'm looking forward to that glass of wine or two in person next time you.

Takeaways

• Natalie MacLean's journey into writing was unplanned and stemmed from her love for wine.
• Wine can be a gateway to understanding various aspects of life, including history and culture.
• Writing memoir requires a different set of skills compared to journalistic writing.
• The truth in memoir is subjective and can vary from person to person.
• Being vulnerable in writing allows readers to connect with the author.
• Sensory details enhance writing and can be developed through practice and observation.
• Terroir in wine reflects the unique characteristics of the writer's voice.
• Authors should embrace their individuality in their writing style.
• Online criticism can be overwhelming, but seeking support is crucial.
• Memoir writing is both challenging and rewarding, requiring full commitment. You can't just turn off online negativity; it requires active management.
• Leaning on friends and family can provide immense support during crises.
• Resilience is key; stubbornness can be a strength in tough times.
• Therapy and counseling are valuable tools for personal growth.
• Sharing your story can help others who are struggling.
• Engaging with book clubs can create community and discussion.
• Building multiple income streams is essential for writers.
• Podcasting allows for deep connections with audiences.
• Protecting your mental health is crucial in a public-facing career.
• Creating a reader guide can enhance engagement with your book.

The post Writing Memoir And Dealing With Haters With Natalie Maclean first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What is dark tourism and why are many of us interested in places associated with death and tragedy? How can you write and self-publish a premium print guidebook while managing complicated design elements, image permissions, and more? With Leon Mcanally.

In the intro, level up with author assistants [Written Word Media]; and Blood Vintage signing pics.

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 

Leon McAnally is the author of A Guide to Dark Attractions in the UK.

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

Show Notes

• The definition of dark tourism and what types of places it includes
• Public opinion around dark tourism sites
• Self-publishing to keep creative control of book design and content
• Researching historical sites and keeping an organized system
• How to obtain permissions for publishing images
• Working with a designer on a photo-heavy book
• Using book signings and social media as part of a book marketing strategy
• Managing expectations for research- and design-extensive projects

You can find Leon on his Facebook page: Dark Attractions in the UK.

Transcript of Interview with Leon McAnally

Joanna: Leon McAnally is the author of A Guide to Dark Attractions in the UK, which is brilliant. My quote is on the back, and I said, “A fascinating book for all the dark little souls out there.” So welcome to the show, Leon.

Leon: Thank you, Joanna, for having me.

Joanna: I'm excited to talk about this topic, and you and I are both dark little souls. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing.

Leon: Well, I studied travel and tourism in college. That's where I first learned of this term called dark tourism, places associated with death, suffering and tragedy. I came away looking into these places and was really fascinated with the tourism aspect and the history aspect.

My university touched on this topic more, so I went and studied Travel and Tourism at the University of Northampton. I focused a lot around the motivations of dark tourism and the ethical issues around dark tourism.

After uni, I wasn't sure what to do, but I wanted to travel to a lot of the places that I'd been writing about, like Auschwitz and the Catacombs of Paris. Then I got into writing because I came across yourself, actually. When I was researching dark tourism, I think you popped up on a website. I started reading your ARKANE thriller series and looked into yourself a bit more, and I was like, you're just an inspiration.

Joanna: Thank you.

Leon: So it seemed from that, and then yourself. Then I was in Paris visiting the Catacombs at the time, and that evening I sat down and was like, what do I do with myself now? Then I thought to myself, there's no book that covers like dark tourism across the whole of the UK. So, yes, it set me off on a journey, really.

Joanna: First of all, I'm really thrilled to inspire you. I'm glad I turned up on some website, that's excellent.

Let's just return to this idea of dark tourism.

You mentioned places associated with death, suffering and tragedy. You mentioned two places that are quite different, Auschwitz, which of course, is modern horror, really. Then the Paris Catacombs, which, if people don't know, are full of plague dead, but it's bones that are arranged in different ways. I find the Catacombs an awesome place. I'm sure you enjoyed it as well, right?

Leon: Yes, definitely. It was really eye opening.

Joanna: Exactly. I think those two places are disturbing in different ways. People are like, why are the pair of you interested in this stuff? So what do you think? You mentioned studying the motivations. Why do people visit these places?

Why do you and I find these ‘dark tourism' places interesting?

Leon: I think there's a number of factors at play. It depends on the place you're visiting because dark tourism is an umbrella term for loads of places, and that's what a lot of people don't realize.

So it could be that you go to a memorial to remember people who have tragically died. It also could be a totally different place, and it makes you perceive life differently and how you wish to be known in life, as well as after life.

The Victorian cemeteries that are within my book, The Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London, I visited them. So one, they gave me a kind of inspiration and motivated me with my book.

Also, I look at the people who are buried there and how they are known after life. Like they were known back when they were alive, and they're still being known, and their story and their life history is being retold.

Joanna: I mean, you're still in your 20s, and I'm nearly 50, but—

We share this idea around Memento Mori, “remember you will die.”

By going to these places, it's almost inspiring—you mentioned the word inspiration—inspiring you on how to live your life.

Leon: Yes, that's one thing from each place I've visited, while they are different, it still drives that determination in getting my book out there and getting these places known.

There's so many simple memorials to massive tragedies. There's one in Barnsley, a memorial to a coal mine disaster, I believe it killed 361 people.

I look at that and think of the Aberfan in Wales, that is an awful disaster as well, and that's a kind of well-known disaster. It tragically killed a number of children, and that's really well known, but I feel like this other one in Barnsley should just be as well-known as that one.

Joanna: Yes, if people have seen The Crown, they show that Welsh tragedy on The Crown. I can't remember which series.

I get what you mean, like some of these things are more famous than others. For example, Auschwitz, obviously that's not in the UK, but many people will have heard of that and the deaths that went on there. There were so many other camps, that was not like the only camp, but that seems to be what people think of.

So as you say, it's remembering the past, but also helping us live in the future. So I did also want to ask, what reactions have you had around this? So do your family think you're weird? Do your friends think you're weird?

What are the reactions of people who know you?

Leon: When you're going to these places, a lot of people don't consider it dark tourism. You may just go to a castle and learn about executions and walk away, and you don't consider that it is dark tourism, but it falls under this umbrella term. So I'm like, you've participated in dark tourism without knowing it.

They do find some of the places that I visited a bit odd and peculiar. There's a place called Littledean Jail. A gentleman has this old jail, and he's filled it with a number of artifacts and newspaper clippings. It's got artifacts to the likes of Fred and Rose West, the infamous serial killers, and the Kray twins. They found that a bit strange. Like, why would you want to go there and see that? That was a very unusual experience.

Joanna: Did you find that it was glorifying the serial killers or it was more just exposing them?

Leon: Yes. The rooms within the jail, when I walked into Fred and Rose West's cell, it had belongings, like his work boots and a tie and a cabinet, and it had newspaper clippings, obviously, when it all happened. I felt like it was a shrine to them.

It was a bit strange. I was like, why would you want to have all of this on display and stuff. In some aspects, yes, you can look at it as it's glorifying these kind of infamous criminals at the end of the day.

Joanna: It's interesting that some places, so again, we mentioned the catacombs, I find catacombs where there are bones that are obviously long dead, more, I don't know, more peaceful in some way. Yet, I don't want to visit serial killer things.

So I think there are also gradations. So if people listening are like, everything's the same thing, it's not, is it?

You can visit one thing and be disturbed, and visit another and feel at peace. It's really tapping into those feelings.

Leon: Yes, there's definitely a lot of different emotions and feelings that come into these places. I definitely agree with you on that. If you go into the likes of Princess Diana's grave, you're going there to pay respects and remember her life.

You're going to feel a number of different emotions to maybe what you'd feel if you were to visit the Tower of London. You may take a tour, and that's going to be very energized by the tour guide. They're totally on different spectrums, but that's where it's an umbrella term, dark tourism, for all of these different kind of places.

Joanna: Yes, so I was thinking too whether it taps into the same thing as the true crime podcast. True crime is the biggest podcast niche, and I feel like perhaps dark tourism is similar.

It comes from a similar place, a sort of fascination with death and the macabre. It's having a separation from violence and death, like we're still alive, we're still fine, and sort of reflecting that way. What do you think? Do you think it relates to true crime?

Leon: Yes. In some aspects, yes, but it depends how recent the event is because there's got to be some underlying historical factual elements, that dark tourism element. I think the dark tourism has been getting thrown around and been used for marketing of places on the wrong kind of aspects.

Places in America and stuff, places that are haunted are marketing themselves as dark tourism. I'm like, no, it's not. It's not that. There's got to be the factual history element to be labeled under this term dark tourism.

Joanna: I like that because that annoys me as well. To me, I know what dark tourism is, but as you pointed out, a lot of people might get confused.

So let's get into the book then because I have lots of dark tourism. I guess I call them death culture, so morbid anatomy and books around that kind of thing. Paul Koudounaris, I'm sure you've seen his books, lots of that kind of thing. I feel like you could have pitched this to traditional publishing, but you went indie.

Why did you decide to self-publish this book?

Leon: I think that's where you come into play a little bit because you inspire me because you're self-published and everything. So that kind of came into play.

When I actually started looking into it with my designers, they said you could take it to a publishing company, but you wouldn't have so much control over elements of it.

That was a big thing because I was covering the umbrella term of a number of sites. I didn't want a publisher to be like, “No, I don't feel that site should be in there. I don't feel that site should be in it. Oh, this should be in there.” It gave me the control of giving a vast amount of attractions and showing what falls under this term.

Also about when I was styling my book as well, some publishers may have a particular kind of format and style that they would steer towards. I didn't want to be constrained on the designing aspects of my book, really. So it gave me a bit of freeness, should we say.

Joanna: Yes, I love that. I mean, that's why a lot of people go indie because of the control aspect of what goes in the book and the design. We're going to come back to the design, but let's talk about the research. You did mention a bit earlier that you went traveling, but this particular book in the UK, it is really comprehensive.

How did you do your research?

Leon: It took me three years in all. It was traveling to places and also working with a lot of places. I wanted to make sure the factual history element was there within each kind of place. So it was traveling to places, and working places, and also cross referencing information, really.

Joanna: How did you keep all that organized? If you visited a site, did you write notes in a journal? Did you write them on your phone?

Leon: I used notebooks, and I did use my phone to take bullet points of information. So I would read the exhibits, and if there was bits of information that would stick out with me, then I'd bullet point them.

Then I also would then go back to the attraction and say, obviously, “I'm writing this book, and I've got this information, so I just want to double check things.” That then started to build a relationship with attractions.

I just found that when I was researching, there's just so much. I didn't really want to use the internet so much because there's just so much unreliable information and incorrect information. So I made sure that was up to date and things.

Joanna: I think that's great.

How many things are there in the book? How many sites?

Leon: Oh, my goodness. There's just over 300 places.

Joanna: That's just incredible. So you didn't visit every single one of those?

Leon: No, I couldn't visit every single one. I did visit quite a few of them. I did work with quite a few as well. Up to Scotland, all the way down to the south of England, I was working with places.

When I was writing about their history and things, and when I was saying I was writing about dark tourism, a lot of places would be like, “Oh, we're not too sure.” Then showing them what I was writing about and giving them more of an in depth understanding of the dark tourism term, that helped in me gaining places. Also some places just still didn't wish to fall under that term.

There was one place that I won't say the name of, but I'd written about, and they was happy with the write, but they said they don't wish to fall under this term dark tourism because they look at it more as a scientific kind of purposes. So I was like, okay, no, that's fine. So obviously they didn't make it into my book.

There was another aspect to it is I wanted to show how society reacts to dark sites. So if it was a more memorial, how had societies reacted in the process of the disaster and after the process in remembering people?

So that Barnsley Coal Mine Disaster Memorial, there was a community that helped that disaster, and there's still a legacy of it. The community is wanting it to be known and remembered. So I felt that it was important that places like that went into my book, really.

Joanna: I agree with a lot of the places in the book, but you do have a lot more memorials and things than I would have I've. I've got the book right here next to me. I've got my copy next to me, and I just opened it. I just opened it to London.

So you've got the Hunterian Museum, which is awesome. I should say that it inspired my book Desecration. I love that museum. Then next to it is the Hungerford Footbridge Skateboard Graveyard. So I was like, okay, that's really interesting because I do know that if you walk over that bridge, you can see it. Why choose something like that?

Is that more, as you said, the response to grief over something people care about?

Leon: Yes, it's the response of the skateboarding community of what took place on that foot bridge, at the end of the day. It's kind of how they remember a local skater, that aspect of how they pull together and remember their fellow skater. They lay their skateboards and chuck them over the bridge.

Joanna: It's interesting. In the book you say, “The skateboarding community has shown how the process of grief differs among communities, and there's a need to personalize the way we honor someone's life.” So I love that. I think it's really interesting what you've done with the book.

One of the things I noticed immediately is that there are lots of pictures. I've discovered that image permissions are a nightmare. Even if they're your photos, if they're in a private place, then you need permission.

How did you manage the image permissions?

Leon: It stems back to building that relationship with places. So I'd write the piece and send it over, and they would be quite happy with it. Then I would say, I've got images from myself, or I've sourced images, are you happy for this to be featured alongside it?

There was like, yes. Other places would be like, oh, we prefer to give you an image for it to be credited. So I was happy to do that. It was literally building that relationship and saying, “I'm writing a book. I'm looking at featuring you in my book. Can I write a piece and see what you think?”

I was making sure that the kind of factual history element was correct, and then going from there, really. There was a couple of sites who were like, “No, you can write a piece, but we don't wish for an image to be featured because we don't allow photography within this space.”

So that's why there's a few places I name that have not got images because they were happy for the entry to be featured, but as they don't allow permission of photography, they didn't wish for an image to be featured within the book.

Joanna: Did you have to pay for any permissions?

Leon: I did have to pay for a few of the permissions.

Joanna: What sort of price?

Leon: It varies a lot. One of them was 170 pounds to have it within my book to get the permission, but I was adamant that I wanted that image within my book.

Joanna: Yes, you have a lot of images. I like the book a lot because it has so many images. As I said, when I looked at it, I was like, oh my goodness, I know how much pain this is. You must be very organized then to keep track of everything. Like, if you're emailing all these places, you're sending them text, you're asking for images.

Did you have a process for keeping track of permissions, or are you just a super organized person?

Leon: I am a very organized person. I get told I'm too organized. Even in doing my day job, I get told I'm too over organized because I'm looking at kind of February now. People are like, Christmas is not even here yet.

So, yes, it was emailing places, and then I'd have kind of that written permission, and I'd put it to one kind of side to keep at the end of the day. I think my designer has a few as well.

We keep them to one side because if later down the road, they were to say they don't wish for that image to be featured anymore, that's fine. We can obviously remove it and things later, at a later day.

Joanna: You mentioned your job.

What do you do as a day job?

Leon: I am an activities coordinator in a care home. So that did actually come in. It did make me think a little bit when I was writing about my book, because working with the elderly generation, history is important to them.

I was speaking to the residents, and they would tell me aspects of the war and stuff. They were so passionate about telling their stories to make sure that future generations were known and they were told correctly. So that had a bit of an impact as well while I was writing my book.

Joanna: Oh, I love that. So you mentioned your designer. So tell us, how did you work with the designer? As you said, you're quite controlling, so you must have known how you wanted it to look.

How did you find a designer and then work with them?

Leon: Three designers actually collaborated on this book together. I had one main designer, Marie-Louise, who owns the company Lovely Evolution. Then she was working with another two designers as well, and they gave me different proofs.

Then I picked aspects that I liked from different proofs, and then that was brought into one. I was a bit picky along the way of my process of designing it.

So even when I got the proofs—because there's a background on the pages, like the illustrations behind the text and the images and stuff—we only had the one proof of that. I was like, oh, it'd be a really good idea to have the sections with a different background.

So it was little bits like that I picked out and made suggestions. All three designers were very good at working together. It was just a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, as you can probably see from looking at it, and fitting it all together.

Joanna: Yes. I mean, I think my brain is very different to your brain. It is, as you say, a jigsaw puzzle. Your brain must have figured out how you wanted it to go.

As you say, there's so many little extra things. Like in the corner of each section, there's like a little illustration as well. A dragon in Wales, and different things there. As you say, different background images as well as other images. I just think it's incredible.

You mentioned there, three designers, it's took you three years, you've got all these permissions.

What kind of budget did you have for this book? Basically, is this a labor of love?

Leon: It is a labor of love because I'm just very passionate about our British history at the end of the day. With dark tourism, people associate so many places abroad, like Auschwitz, the Catacombs of Paris, Ground Zero.

I was just like, there's so much to England. So it was a very passionate project in showing there's so much more in England that's linked to dark tourism than people initially thought. There has been a budget and that has gone over a bit, I'm not going to lie.

Joanna: It does look like a pricey project, as far as I can see. I did want to ask, because at the moment the copy I have is a large scale, but it's still paperback. So are you planning on doing an eBook? I think it would work on a tablet, on an iPad or something. I think you could also do an audiobook, or a short form podcast, or a hardback.

Are you thinking of doing other editions?

Leon: I can't say too much because we are working on other little things, but the physicality of the book is an important part to myself. Like I feel like to appreciate it, you've got to be holding it.

I know a lot of people like tablets and things, and I do understand that, but I just feel like it's so heavily designed. My designers like really hard on designing it and piecing it all together.

Like the maps on their own, Mark worked on the maps at Pixooma, and he took three months just working on the maps on their own. So I just feel like you have to be holding it to appreciate it. I'm a bit old school like that.

Joanna: I love this. You're like, 20 years younger than me, and you're so old school. I am actually holding it, and I am appreciating it as we're talking.

When did you work with an editor in the process, for the words?

Leon: I started working with an editor really early on. Before the design kind of process, it was important to get the editing aspect of it all done to hand over to my designers because of the length of the text, and obviously then putting it together like a puzzle piece.

So working with an editor started very early on, and she worked on Lonely kind of Planet guide books, and had a lot of experience on guide books and things. She made a number of really good suggestions, as well as the text. She also helped me on proofs of the designs. So she gave suggestions for the designs from her experience.

Joanna: I think that's a great person to work with, someone who's done like the Lonely Planet books. It is similar to that in the vibe, in that you don't sit down and read this cover to cover. You're going to dip in and out depending on different areas. I buy books like this for inspiration for my own travels, but also for my own writing. So I think that's cool.

So we've got the book. You've invested your time and your money in making this beautiful book, but marketing this kind of book is difficult. So tell us—

How have you been marketing the book?

Leon: I haven't stopped marketing the book since its release. It's been a real push. I've marketed the book from doing a few book signing events that stemmed from me building that relationship with places. So they've been happy enough to hold me for book signing events.

Then I've also done podcasts with people. I'm using social media. I'm speaking about the book wherever I can, really.

Joanna: I did see you doing signings at interesting venues, like some of your dark venues, on social media.

How did you get people to come along to those signings?

Many people, including myself, are scared of doing signings because often nobody shows up. So how did you do that? How were those?

Leon: Yes, they worked okay. It did depend on the day and the footfall. A lot of the attractions, because we'd organize this book signing, they would promote it on their social media or via their newsletter.

What really helped, some places have been better than other places, but there has been this rippling effect I have noticed afterwards. So I have had people contact me afterwards and said, “Oh, I saw that you were at Shrewsbury Prison. I'd actually be interested in a copy of your book.”

Then I've also had places that have been then willing to stock it in their gift shop as well.

Joanna: I was going to ask about the bookshops because it seems to me a lot of these bigger places have bookstores, and if you can get them to take some copies and do it like that. I do know the profit margin on that is very low, and they'll want their own profit.

Are you pursuing more bookstore sales, or are you preferring to sell from Amazon?

Leon: I think the agreements have worked quite well so far. The places that I've built that relationship with and worked with, they've been quite good, really, in compromising. Obviously they have wanted to take a profit and a percentage of that, but then obviously they understand the product as well.

Obviously, there's the time that I've put into it and my designers working on it and everything. So they've been quite good at working together.

Joanna: Then on social media, obviously you've been posting photos of you in these different places and some of the research stuff.

What have you found works on social media?

Or are you just trying to do as much as possible and see what happens?

Leon: I think one thing I have noticed is getting it into the relevant groups that would be interested and showing how that is relevant to that group. If you're going to use social media and just plow it across social media and use kind of one post, then it probably wouldn't work.

I've been going to groups and speaking to people and stuff, and then seeing which aspects of my book links in, and then I've shared about. That has helped as well.

Joanna:

It is full color. It has so many pictures. The production value is high on the book. So I think this is a gift book as well.

This is something that people buy and have on their shelf or their coffee table, whatever. This is difficult in one way to market, but in other ways, it's evergreen.

So it's going to keep selling over time, as opposed to make you tons of money right now and then stop selling. This is more like a long-term prospect, I think.

Leon: Yes, definitely. Me and the designers I work with wanted it as that guidebook that you can take with you, but also it's a coffee table, bookshelf kind of book that is a talking point. It's something that you can pick up, read one entry and put it back down, and then pick up and read a different entry another day.

So it's not going to generate that massive one-time income. I do to see it is a trickle in, long-term thing. Hopefully, I'll work on other ideas alongside that.

Joanna: Yes, well, that's the other thing. Marketing one book is hard. So are you considering Dark Attractions of Europe?

Have you thought of other book ideas? Or was it just a one-off?

Leon: There are other ideas. I'm working with my designers, and I'm also still working with the attractions closely. So, yes, there's little ideas there, but it would be at a moment where I'm just not expecting it, and it will all just gel itself together.

Like I said going back, you inspired me. I'd learned of this term dark tourism, and it was when I was on a holiday of an evening. It literally will be that I'll have a moment, and I'll think, right, okay, that is it. So, yes, I'm kind of working on a few different ideas that I'm trying to just gel together at the moment.

Joanna: I love that. You said you're super organized and quite controlling, but you're also intuitive. So I think that sounds great.

Just looking back over the years you've been working on this project. So if people are thinking of doing something like this—

What would you say were the biggest challenges of this project that you've learned to do differently if you do another project like this?

Leon: I think don't put too much pressure on yourself. Along the whole process of my book, I was very harsh myself because it was a vast book, and I was doing a number of different places.

There's so many aspects to this book. Designing, researching, writing, and then I was emailing, and I was calling, and I was sourcing images. If you're going to take on a big project like this, don't be too harsh on yourself.

Just give a good time management to each aspect that you're working on. Have time to step back away from the whole desk to re-energize because it was a hefty project to take on. I was very determined, but I was very harsh on myself as well.

Joanna: I do remember when we had originally talked, you had a timeline in mind. Then you said, no, it's going to take longer. As you said, this is a huge project.

Had you underestimated the amount of work?

Leon: Yes, definitely. I definitely underestimated. I was writing, and there were so many places that I wanted to get in and then research. Then when I got to just over 300 I was like, this is the cut and rope kind of moment.

There's also a lot more to the design process because I know that I wanted a lot from my designers. I asked for a lot in the whole kind of designs, and I was picky. So, yes, there was that aspect. My main designer, Marie-Louise, she fell pregnant and didn't expect to fall pregnant in the process.

Joanna: Well, I think you've done an incredible job. So how do you feel now?

Are you proud of the book? Is it everything you wanted it to be?

Leon: Yes. I am really proud of it. I am happy with it. I just want to keep on pushing it and getting it out there and known. It's not a financial element, it's actually I want to get more of our history made aware.

Like I said, there is loads of little places in there that are simple memorials, or just little places that people are just not aware about. I'm very passionate about our British history, and I just want it to be known. I want to give people inspiration to just have a simple little day trip out.

People say, “Oh, there's nothing to do, and we've got to go abroad to go on holiday.” There's just so much that people don't realize that there is to do.

Joanna: That is so true. The more I stay in our country, the more interesting I find things. There's so much history here.

Where can people find you and the book online?

Leon: You can find my book on Amazon. I have a Facebook page at Dark Attractions in the UK. People can follow me through that and keep up to date.

Joanna: So thanks so much for your time today, Leon. That was great.

Leon: Thank you, Joanna, for having me. It was fantastic speaking to you. Thank you.

Takeaways

• Dark tourism encompasses a wide range of sites and experiences.
• Personal experiences at dark tourism sites can inspire deeper reflections on life.
• The motivations for visiting dark tourism sites vary greatly among individuals.
• Self-publishing allows for greater creative control over content and design.
• Researching dark tourism requires thorough investigation and relationship-building with sites.
• Community responses to tragedies can shape the memorialization of events.
• Dark tourism can evoke a spectrum of emotions, from respect to fascination.
• The relationship between dark tourism and true crime reflects a societal curiosity about death.
• Image permissions can be a significant challenge in publishing.
• Being organized is crucial when managing extensive research and communications. Historical permissions are crucial for ethical storytelling.
• Collaboration with designers can enhance the creative process.
• Passion for a subject can drive a project forward.
• The physicality of a book adds to its appreciation.
• Editing should be prioritized early in the process.
• Marketing requires consistent effort and creativity.
• Social media engagement is key to reaching audiences.
• Books can serve as both guides and coffee table pieces.
• Long-term vision is important for book sales.
• Managing expectations is essential in large projects.

The post Dark Tourism And Self-Publishing Premium Print Books With Images With Leon Mcanally first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do you approach writing a second edition of a non-fiction book? How does self-publishing compare to working with a traditional publisher? Can you build a viable business without active social media use? Gin Stephens shares her tips.

In the intro, the end of Kindle Vella [Amazon]; Lessons from week one of the book launch for This is Strategy [Seth Godin]; Seahenge is out now on my store, and on pre-order elsewhere; ChatGPT launched Search [OpenAI]; How Generative AI Search Will Impact Book Discoverability in the Next Decade.

Write and format stunning books with Atticus. Create professional print books and eBooks easily with the all-in-one book writing software. Try it out at Atticus.io

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

Gin Stephens is the New York Times bestselling author of Delay, Don't Deny, Fast. Feast. Repeat., Clean(ish), and other health-related nonfiction books. She's also a podcaster at Intermittent Fasting Stories.

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

• Pros and cons of publishing a second edition of a nonfiction book
• Tips for bringing a heavy subject alive
• Breaking through the noise when misinformation surrounds your subject
• Reasons for going the indie route after traditionally publishing
• The power of word of mouth marketing
• How a small paywall can create a more respectful community
• Social media's impact on mental health
• Creating an ecosystem — podcast, community, and books

You can find Gin at GinStephens.com.

Transcript of Interview with Gin Stephens

Joanna: Gin Stephens is the New York Times bestselling author of Delay, Don't Deny, Fast. Feast. Repeat., Clean(ish), and other health-related nonfiction books. She's also a podcaster at Intermittent Fasting Stories. So welcome back to the show, Gin.

Gin: It is so great to talk to you again.

Joanna: Yes, it's been a few years [Gin's previous interview here]. Now, you have recently released the second edition of Delay, Don't Deny, and I completely get the pain of a subsequent edition. It's just a bit of a nightmare. So I wanted to start by asking you—

Why did you feel like you wanted to do a second edition of that book instead of writing something new?

Gin: Well, that is a great question. I have written new things since writing the original Delay, Don't Deny. This original book that I wrote in 2016, Delay, Don't Deny, and self-published, is just really the bedrock that everything else has been built upon.

I've learned so much more about the topic since I wrote it in 2016, and this book just needed a refresh. It needed some love. I really didn't understand how some people love this one the most.

I was speaking at an event a few years ago, and someone in the audience said, “Which of your books should we start with? Delay, Don't Deny or Fast. Feast. Repeat.?”

Fast. Feast. Repeat. was a New York Times bestseller. It's comprehensive, it's thorough, it's thick. It's every question you could possibly ask about intermittent fasting. It's well referenced. So I said, “Of course start with Fast. Feast. Repeat.“

Then someone in the audience said, “Can I disagree?” I'm like, “Well, go ahead.” She said, “Delay, Don't Deny. I love that one the most.” That got the wheels turning in my head because ever since I moved towards traditional publishing, I hadn't self-published anything.

So I thought, people love that original book. I never talked about it anymore, but it kept selling, and people kept buying it. It did need to be updated because some of the advice I did not necessarily agree with anymore.

From 2016 to 2024, things are going to change. There were just some things that were out of date, so it deserved some love.

You know what kept me from revising it sooner? The audiobook. I didn't want to rerecord the audiobook, and of course, you want them to match. Finally, I just bit the bullet.

First I offered it to my publisher, and the amount that they wanted to give me for an advance was so itty bitty. I was like, well, forget that. I'll redo it myself.

Joanna: That's interesting. I want to come back. So you said there Fast. Feast. Repeat. I've got these books, I've got several of your books, and Fast. Feast. Repeat., you said it's comprehensive, it's thick, it's well referenced. You're a scientist. You do a lot of research. You are very knowledgeable.

Do you think that people don't want the heavily researched book, they just want the story-based book?

Gin: Well, it depends on the person. There are people who resonate with each kind, and that's what I realized. I would like the one with all the references in there, definitely. I want to be able to look at them. I actually do that, by the way, when I read a book written by a scientist or a doctor.

I'll turn to the reference section, especially if something doesn't sound right, I'm like let me look at that myself. I've actually found places where they did not actually represent the study the same way—after I read it—it's not what they said about it.

I also want to correct, I am not a practicing research scientist. I have a master's degree in natural sciences and a doctorate in gifted education. At my root, I'm very much a teacher.

I had to write a dissertation, I learned how to research, I learned how to share all of that research as a part of going through my doctoral program. So I just wanted to make that clear.

So some people just want the basics, and that's what Delay, Don't Deny is for. So it really needed to be updated, like I said, because the people that preferred, you know, just tell me the quick part, give me the stories, they needed Delay, Don't Deny.

Then I actually am now recommending everyone start with Delay, Don't Deny because it might be all you need, but if you want more, that's when it's time to turn to Fast. Feast. Repeat.

I also think that once you've lived the lifestyle for a while, everything in Fast. Feast. Repeat. will click, if that makes sense. You'll understand it better, and you're ready to dig into the science more than maybe on day one.

Joanna: Yes, I totally agree. I discovered you on the podcast years ago, and I still am IF. It's so funny though, I almost don't say I'm IF anymore because I never eat breakfast, or very occasionally, but mostly I start after lunch sometime and have sort of an 18:6 type of lifestyle, as you say. It's almost like I don't even consider that to be IF anymore.

I know you've been doing Intermittent Fasting for years. Do you kind of feel that way sometimes?

Gin: It's just what we do. I've been doing it for over 10 years now, and it's just what I do. I don't have to think about it. You're not like, what am I doing today? What's my window? You just live your life, and then you have your window.

Going back to how you used to live way back before you started just feels so foreign. You couldn't even imagine doing it.

Joanna: No, it's interesting.

Coming back on the book, you said it needed a refresh. So I've done several subsequent editions, and I know how that feels. For people listening, how do you know? So you're reading it, and are you just like, “oh my goodness, I can't believe this”?

How did you decide what to keep and what to change in the new edition?

Gin: Well, I know what questions people have, and I know where the confusions lie. You're familiar with the terminology “clean fast”, and that is foundational in my work. What's funny is, when I wrote Delay, Don't Deny in 2016, we had not started using the terminology “clean fast” in my groups yet.

I came up with that wording at some point in 2017, and it stuck. So it's just kind of funny that Delay, Don't Deny doesn't have the wording “clean fast” in it. I also was a little wishy-washy about a few things related to the clean fast and how to fast properly.

That was because there was the doctor who had written a book, Dr. Jason Fung, The Obesity Code. He was like, “Well, have a little lemon if you want,” and I didn't want to contradict him in my book. Who am I to contradict him? So I'm like, well, I'll just kind of go along with what he said.

Then the longer that I supported people through intermittent fasting and my Facebook groups, we had about 500,000 combined members before I ended up leaving Facebook. So over time I realized the lemon does make a difference, and that little splash of cream does make a difference.

So I became more emphatic, I guess is the word I would use, about the clean fast, just because we had it validated with so many people who found that the clean fast changed the whole experience. So I developed confidence, and I can say with confidence, this is how it works better, and you should give this a try.

By the time Fast. Feast. Repeat. came out in 2020, I was really embraced to the idea of the clean fast and very confidently saying, “This is what I think would work for you better. Try this.” So I needed to get that into Delay, Don't Deny as well.

Not to mention the success stories in the back. Looking back at it through fresh eyes today, when I wrote Delay, Don't Deny, I was just leading a small Facebook group. At that time we had like, I don't know, 1500 members or something. I can't even remember.

So I just put out into the group, “Hey, anybody want to share their story in my book? Just send it to me and I'll put it in,” but I hadn't written anything yet. I didn't have any podcasts yet. I was just leading people who had joined together in a Facebook group.

So the stories are just very ‘interesting' that are in the original Delay, Don't Deny. I'm just going to say they're ‘interesting' because I'm so grateful for the people who shared their stories early on. Now, many of them are not things I would recommend that you do. So reading through them years later, I'm like, oooh.

So what I love more than anything about the revised second edition of Delay, Don't Deny is the success stories section.

I was like, how am I going to gather them just in my community? Am I going to need to email my whole list? How many stories will come in? I just put it out into my private intermittent fasting community and said, “Here's the Google link. Fill out this form if you want to.”

Then I just left it there, and people submitted their stories, and they're just amazing. The beauty of it this time is that they have read my books, and listened to my podcast, and been a part of the community. So all the stories align with the advice I would give.

There was nothing that jumped out as, oooh, I wouldn't suggest that someone do that. Instead, they're all aligned. So that was really, really important to me to get the good stories with the aligned recommendations out there.

Joanna: Then I guess there'll be some people listening, people who want to write a non-fiction book, that feel a bit like you did, which is, “Oh, well, there's a doctor who's written a book on this. Maybe I can't because I'm not special,” or whatever it is.

Do you think you made the right choice publishing that first edition when you did?

Looking back, you're happy with that? You're not embarrassed? How can you encourage people to put the book out there even though, as you say now, maybe everything wasn't perfect?

Gin: It wasn't perfect.

If we wait for something to be perfect or for 100% of everyone to agree with you, you will never do anything.

If you look at books written by doctors, they don't all agree. Doctors are people with opinions and blinders on for certain things on occasion.

So the more you read and see what's out there and how people disagree, the more you feel like, oh, I can have an opinion too. Now, do I regret putting it out there? Absolutely not.

I've sold over 380,000 copies of that first little book, and for a self-published book that is only available in paperback through Amazon I feel pretty good about that. I mean, that's it. I don't have it wide. You want the paperback. It's Amazon. That's it.

Just think of all the lives that have been touched by intermittent fasting. I'm not pretending to be something that I'm not. I'm very, very clear throughout the book of who I am, what my background is like.

For example, I mentioned that I have a doctorate in gifted and talented education. I remember when I first joined this like health and wellness community with influencers, writers, podcasters, a lot of doctors, actual medical doctors in this group.

One of the first things the people running this group said to me is, “You're Doctor Stephens. You have a doctorate. You should put doctor on the front of your books.” I'm like, nope, because I'm not that kind of doctor. I don't want to misrepresent myself.

Be confident in who you are. I know what my skills are. I'm a teacher. I can read things and then teach them to you. I taught math, and I'm not a mathematician. I taught history, and I'm not a historian. I taught reading, and I'm not a linguist or whatever.

I am able to teach things and say, “Here's what I have learned, and I'm sharing that with you. Here are some resources where you can go learn more.” I think the fact that I'm not a medical doctor, and that I am a teacher, has been my superpower because people can understand what I write.

I'm trained in delivering content, so I think that I'm able to do that better than a lot of doctors.

Joanna: Absolutely. There'll be some people listening who listen to the medical podcasts out there, Peter Attia and things like that, where you're like, okay, but I can't listen to this because it's way too technical for me.

I mean, Intermittent Fasting Stories is normal people talking about normal life, and not using difficult words about whatever hormones. You do go through things like hormone effect and all of that kind of thing in Fast. Feast. Repeat., I think, but it's like you don't need that to get started. You can just get started with the story.

So I think that's so important. I think this is one of the problems with nonfiction books, is people think they need to be all fact based and emotionless. You've written with real voice, like your actual voice is in the book.

Do you have any tips for bringing a subject alive if it gets too heavy?

Gin: I think it's just a matter of readers want to connect with stories, whether they're reading nonfiction or fiction. We enjoy connecting with stories. Stories are powerful.

So when I first wanted to write a book about intermittent fasting and share what I knew to help people learn how to do it and apply it into their lives, I was really inspired by a set of books that I read when I was pregnant and a new mother. It was The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy. Do you remember that series?

Joanna: No, but I'm happily child free, so not my thing.

Gin: I was pregnant, and my babies were born in '98 and '99. So that tells you when those books were really, really popular. There was the Bible of pregnancy, What to Expect When You're Expecting, and that one was dry, and it was like factual.

You definitely needed that one, but The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy was irreverent, and it was funny, and it was like a girlfriend was talking to you. You wanted to read it. I mean, I read that multiple times.

The same thing with, she had The Girlfriends' Guide to the First Year and The Girlfriends' Guide to the Toddler Years. You just felt like somebody got it. You're learning about it from someone who got it, and it was funny, and you didn't feel alone.

I think that when we're thinking about health and wellness and the diet industry, you know, you can read a book written by the person who is maybe a nutritionist or a workout expert, and they've never struggled like you. They've never been overweight, really. Maybe they had to lose five pounds or something.

They've got this book for you, and you're like, but do they really get what it's like to weigh 210 pounds? You know, I know what that's like because I did weigh 210 pounds. I was obese, and I lost 80 pounds with intermittent fasting.

I know what it's like to be on that diet roller coaster of up and down. I know what it's like to read all the diet books, and try everything, and just be so stuck. So I wanted that to all come through in a way that was relatable. It's my story in there interwoven through Delay, Don't Deny.

I think the reason people love this book so much, and I've heard this hundreds or thousands of times, I don't even know how many times, that people will say—

“I read that book, and I thought, if you can do it, I can do it.”

It was just the fact that they felt like it was a real person that was telling them there's hope, and here's the science. You know, I'm putting the science in there too. It's not just only my story, I have the science in there.

I talk about autophagy. I talk about the problem with calories in, calories out. The Biggest Loser study, and why low calorie diets fail us. So the science is there. It's got that underpinning of science, but it's also relatable, and you know that you can do it.

Joanna: Absolutely. So one of the other interesting things is that when you started out on intermittent fasting over a decade ago, there really wasn't much out there about it, but now it feels like the market is saturated.

There's books and podcasts. You go on TikTok or Instagram or whatever, reels, and there's positive stuff, there's negative stuff, and there's just a lot of stuff. I mean, even on Amazon, there's just a ton of stuff.

How are you breaking through the noise in a saturated market so that people find your books?

Especially when there's a lot of hype, misinformation, and people might put you in the same bracket as some of the people who aren't so good, let's say.

Gin: I will say the truth sells. There's a lot of misinformation out there, but the truth will make the difference. The truth of the clean fast and the way that that will change the experience for you.

For everybody listening who may be like, “Well, I tried intermittent fasting. It didn't work for me,” I bet you weren't fasting clean. I bet you were trying something overcomplicated. So my magic secret, which isn't so magic and it's not really a secret, is word of mouth.

If somebody read my book, let's just say the original Delay, Don't Deny, and they read it in early 2017 when it first hit the market, and then they had great success. Well, people around them notice, and they're like, “Hey, what are you doing?” And then they tell them, and then you're just spreading the word like that.

That's really been the magic of my work reaching a lot of people. Yes, I've got the podcast, Intermittent Fasting Stories, and my newer one Fast. Feast. Repeat. we've been doing for just over a year.

People might just stumble across them, and then they hear the stories, and then they're like, well, let me see what Gin has written. Then they end up with my books, and then they try it, and then it works. Then they tell people.

There was a commercial in the United States in, I don't know, the 70s, the 80s, it was like a shampoo commercial. Maybe it was Faberge Organics, I can't remember, but it was, “And then I told two friends, and then she told two friends, and then she told two friends.” It was just like, yes, word of mouth really can spread the word.

So, yes, there's a lot of confusing information out there.

There are a lot of books on intermittent fasting that are overly complicated.

But I think those kind of fall from the wayside. Delay, Don't Deny has been selling steadily since I released at the end of 2016. Other fasting books come and go.

The same with Fast. Feast. Repeat. It's been selling steadily since 2020. If you compare it to the other fasting books that are out there, almost 100% of the other fasting books also have a diet plan they want you to follow.

Maybe they want you to be intermittent fasting plus paleo. Or maybe they want you to be intermittent fasting plus keto. Or you have to be intermittent fasting plus whole food, plant based, low fat, or whatever it might be.

My work is intermittent fasting plus eat the way that makes you feel your best, whatever that is, and it will probably change over time. It really empowers you, instead of being a prescriptive plan.

People want that. They might not know they want it. They might be used to a prescriptive plan. There's a lot of magic in being empowered to choose for yourself.

Joanna: This word of mouth, I totally agree with you. You said there, selling steadily, which is the mark of word of mouth. It's not like you put everything into the first month and then it all disappears.

This is also one of the challenges of a second edition because with a true second edition, you lose all those reviews. You lose all the incoming links from all the websites that linked to that edition of the book. So presumably you feel that's worth it because—

That book on Amazon starts again, essentially, with no reviews.

Gin: It does, and you know what? I put that out there in August of this year, 2024, and I think it's got 78 reviews already. Whereas my other one had like 13,000, okay.

Joanna: It takes time.

Gin: It does take time. When I'm looking to buy a book, I look at the overall ratings. I'm not going to read 13,000 reviews, right. A book with 78 reviews, and it's 4.9 stars, I'm going to be really excited about that book.

I'm very clear in the updated description that it's a second edition, and I talk about the updates and how it's changed. I had to really think about that, since I'm self-published, I could have just slipped the revisions in the old version. I could have done it.

I debated about that and decided not to for multiple reasons. One of which is used copies, and then people would accidentally end up with the used copy of the first edition, and I didn't want them to read the first edition anymore. I wanted them to read the second edition.

So I just made that decision, and it was not easy that day that I started with zero reviews on the new edition. Luckily, my community, of course, they're the ones who found it first. My community found it, and they're the ones giving it the five star reviews because they're already fans. So hopefully that will lead more people to it.

Joanna: Then I've got to return to the audiobook because you said you did not want to do the audiobook. So tell us—

Why do you hate doing audiobooks, and what are your tips?

Gin: I just hate doing audiobooks, but I have to read them myself because everyone's used to my voice. They listen to my podcast. So I know I have to read it myself. Also I'm going to give it the right kind of intonation. I know how it should be emphasized.

It's a lot of work, and I don't edit audio. I can edit the written word. I can design my own book. By the way, you self-publish, right? You're self-published?

Joanna: Yes, but I employ freelancers to design things.

Gin: Well, I'm pretty much a one stop shop when it comes to the paperback. I just have started using Atticus for formatting.

Joanna: Yes, sponsor of the show. Atticus.

Gin: Atticus, you are amazing. I don't know how I found out about it, but that's another reason why I needed to do a second edition because, embarrassing, my first edition, I did it in Word. It looked crazy when I put them side by side.

I mean, people still bought it, but after being traditionally published with professional book designers, I was like, oh my gosh, Delay, Don't Deny looks like I made it on Word, Whereas —

The second edition is just beautiful. Thank you, Atticus.

The thing about the audiobook is I had to hire somebody. I had to go to a recording studio. I'm still going through the editing process right now. So it's just a lot of work. It's like running a marathon.

Joanna: Yes, it's definitely something you have to get used to. After my first audiobook I did myself, I was like never again. Then I started hiring people, and then I went back to it.

I've got an audio studio here in my office, so I just now do it myself. There's a lot of AI tools you can use for editing. So I think it depends how many books you end up doing yourself. Maybe there's more.

Gin: I'm grateful that I can outsource it. Just like you said, you send some things to designers. For me, it's the audio part.

That's the part I want everyone who's listening to hear. Be confident in the part you can do, and also be confident in the part you can't do. If that's the part holding you back, you can hire somebody to do stuff for you and get a professional product out there.

Joanna: Absolutely. Let's come to the publishing bit because, like you said, you started out in self-publishing, but then you did several books with traditional publishers.

What did you love about traditional publishing?

What did you find useful? What did you enjoy? Since I know you love learning.

Gin: There are definitely parts that I enjoy. I enjoy having copy editors who read my work and find mistakes, but they also don't find everything. Let me just put it that way. Even after a book has been completely copy edited, things can still get out of whack through the traditional publishing process.

I enjoy that there are cover designers to work on the cover, but again, also you want to be able to give your input. You have to put your foot down sometimes and say, no, I want it to look more like this, and that's important to know.

I enjoy that they have a liaison with Amazon if those scammers get out there, and they will, and they do. Putting out their little scam books, and it ends up in the listing, and they can get right on there with Amazon and get that taken care of for you. So I really enjoy that.

It feels great to be supported through the audiobook process. MacMillan Audio handled everything. They set up the studio. All I had to do was show up. There was a director there with me, the audio engineer.

Actually, two of my audiobooks I did at home because of COVID. Like even though I had MacMillan Audio and professional directors, we did it from home with them with me throughout the process. It was just because of COVID both times.

The third time I went to the recording studio, and that's where I connected with the guy. When I did my latest book, 28-Day FAST Start Day-by-Day, which was my last to be traditionally published, they found the audio engineer with a recording studio close to me.

I didn't have to try to put blankets up in my office, for example, like I did the last two times in my little blanket recording fort. So that was really, really nice having the professionals to go through it and listen to it and make sure it's just right, all of that. It's just nice to have those eyes.

I learned a lot, and I think it made me have a better product. Like I said, looking at the results of how my first edition looked compared to how my second edition looks, it just made me bump it up. You want to have a book that compares.

Joanna: Yes, I think that's it. People listening, know that you can hire editors, you can hire book cover designers. As you have done, you can hire audio people. You can hire pretty much everyone now, a lot of whom used to work for traditional publishing. So there's options both ways.

What's interesting, of course, and you mentioned that the advance you were offered was not enough to be interesting.

Were there other reasons you decided to go indie with this book?

Gin: Just because Delay, Don't Deny is like I wanted it like I wanted it. That's one of the tradeoffs of working with a traditional publisher. From the title, to the book cover, to what they put on the back, to what's written in the Amazon listing.

Every single one of my traditionally published books, the way it's worded in the Amazon listing is not the way I would word it. Every one of them. The back matter is not the way I would have worded it.

As a part of the collaborative process, you might get a first draft from your editor, and then you make suggestions, but it's still that somebody else is uploading that to Amazon. Somebody else is doing all of that.

I mentioned to you before we recorded, in an email, I have another book that I'm going to be working on, and my agent shopped it to my editor, and I got a very substantial six figure advance offer from it, and I have turned it down. I'm going to self-publish the new book as well.

I mean, it made total sense to do the second edition of Delay, Don't Deny myself, but for a new book with a great advance offer from a traditional publisher that I enjoy working with. I love my editor. I love my agent. They're great people. They have a great team.

I looked back at a book that I wrote in 2017 called Feast Without Fear, and I haven't talked about that one much, and I looked at my earnings from 2017 through today, and my earnings on that little book I never really talk about are almost as much as the big six figure advance that they're offering me. I was like, huh—

Why would I traditionally publish it when I can put it out there myself?

I have an audience of people who are going to be interested in reading what I have to put out there.

Of course, it's not all about the money, but now that I have realized with Atticus, and I've got someone who can help me with the audiobook, I really can do it myself now. I have the skills to do it. I have the support.

So everything that I really enjoyed about traditional publishing, I can make my new book look very professional, and do it myself, and retain the royalties, and have control.

The new book that I'm got in my head, and I have it a little bit outlined, both my agent and my editor said, “I like the idea, but you're going to need to work on the title. We don't really like that.”

I'm like, well, I don't want to work on the title. I really like it the way I want it. So just all those little things along the way that you lose control of when you do traditional publishing. That's important when you're a writer and you're a little bit of an artist too, and you want it like you want it.

Joanna: Yes, I think that's important. One of the biggest things there, of course, is that you have a community. Now, like everyone, you started with no community, so you did have nobody. Then over time, like you said, you started on Facebook groups.

You left Facebook, and you now have a paid community on Circle.

 This is something that many people are petrified of. A, of leaving Facebook, but B, starting a paid community. So can you maybe talk about that? Why you did it, why you left, and any tips?

Gin: I could do like a five hour show about why I left! When I left, it was the end of 2020, going into 2021, and you can remember what a charged time that was on Facebook. Okay, now imagine I'm running health related groups, and also imagine that there are almost 500,000 combined members.

So you could just imagine how charged that time was and how difficult it was. One thing about Facebook groups, especially in the health and wellness community, is that Facebook was shutting people down for things.

I mean, I don't know if they're still doing that in groups. I don't really know since I don't run any groups. I can remember somebody that was actually in my community, in my Facebook community, had some sort of recipe group or something related to food. It was a Facebook group with maybe 10,000 members.

She woke up one day and the entire group had been shut down by Facebook, and there was no way for her to get it back. I thought, what if Facebook decides that fasting is dangerous and shuts me down? I would have no recourse. It would all be lost. All these people that are in my community would just be gone.

We got dings against our group for things like AI didn't like certain wording, like they really don't like the word fat. In a fasting community, there's something called being fat adapted, and that is actually a good thing. You want to be fat adapted, meaning your body has flipped the metabolic switch and is running on fat easily.

AI would be like, “You used the word fat, and you're the admin. Three more strikes, we'll shut down your group.” I mean, you'd get an AI-generated ding. Somebody who was a moderator accidentally did some emoji, and then she's like, “Oops, sorry. I didn't mean to pick the angry emoji. Fat thumbs.” Ding, bullying.

She's like, “Wait, no, that was me. I said I had fat thumbs.” You know what fat thumbs means. It's not bullying. It means you accidentally clicked the wrong thing.

There was that fear of losing my whole community [if Facebook shut us down.]

There was also a little bit of wandering off the street in Facebook, if you know what I mean. People could find you by accident, and that was beautiful, but also not always.

Sometimes people would find you by accident, and they wouldn't have any idea about you or anything about you, or your books, or your podcast, or what you recommended, and they would come in hot. Then they'd argue with you about things.

I just want to support people who are bought into the clean fast. I want to support people who have similar goals, who have similar philosophies towards fasting. I don't want to argue with people who think that Bulletproof Coffee is a great way to start your day when you're fasting.

There are communities where those people can be really happy, but I don't want to have to police that all day long. So I would like a community where I can support people who are following the advice that I give.

I don't want to argue with anyone on Facebook ever again until the day that I die, pretty much.

So it was hard because, like I said, I had a giant community. I thought maybe I'm only selling books, and maybe people are only listening to my podcast because of my Facebook groups. Maybe leaving Facebook will make it all stop and that'll be the end. I said, it is worth it. Even if that is true, it is worth it.

So I started my private community, and, oh, some people some people were mad. People that were used to being in my Facebook group for free were super mad. They're like, I read your book, I bought your book, and now you're asking me to pay for your community.

I'm like, well, buying a book means you get a book. You got the book, right? I don't know why reading a book means you get free support for the rest of your life from me, the author. It doesn't.

So the people who joined my community wanted my support, they wanted my advice, they wanted to interact with me, and they were willing to pay for it. It's like $9.99 a month. I'm not really asking a lot, but $9.99 a month weeds out the people who really don't want to be in my community.

So I have a wonderful community, and I love interacting with the people there. They ask questions, and we help them. People post their struggles, they post their successes, and the right people find it who are excited to be there. So that fear that I had when I left, I'm so glad that I did it anyway.

Everything good I've ever done, I did it full of fear, and I did it anyway. So it's been worth it.

I love my community so very much, and I'm grateful for everyone who has moved over with us.

Joanna: I think it's such a big thing. So at the end of 2023, I did something similar with content, which I've put within my Patreon/thecreativepenn. So I've got a Patreon, but I did the same thing. It was like—

I'm getting too much hate talking about specific things. I'm just going to put a very small paywall up.

The difference to mental health is tremendous, right? I was around you at that time, and I remember how stressed you sounded around the stuff on Facebook.

Gin: Well, it was awful in the summer of 2020, when everything was really politically charged. We had a ‘no politics' rule in our Facebook groups, but something happened while I was sleeping one night where someone tried to post something political, and my moderators did not allow it because we're not a political group, we're a Facebook group.

Whether I did or didn't agree with the post, we're not going to have political posts. So the person got really upset that the moderators wouldn't let them post something.

Then instead of just whatever, they went to Amazon and left a one star review on my book and said really mean things that were untrue about me and my personal philosophies. I wasn't even awake. I was sleeping the whole time when it happened.

So I was like, oh, we can't have this. That made me realize that there does need to be a little bit more gatekeeping. We're not going to be political in my group, no matter where we are.

We're going to help you with fasting. We're going to help you with your questions. We're not going to talk about your political leanings, no matter whether I agree with them or whether I don't.

I hope people have no idea where I stand politically. That's what I want. You got plenty of content for that, Gin Stephens doesn't need to be part of it, if you know what I mean.

Joanna: Are you on any social media at all?

Gin: I am on Facebook as Gin Stephens, the person. When I said I was leaving Facebook, I wasn't kidding. I took the app off my phone, and I did not open it or look at it for over a year.

I mean, even like, what are my high school friends doing? What are my college friends doing? I didn't know. I was in my bubble because it almost felt like PTSD, honestly. I realized, you know what, I can go back on Facebook as Gin Stephens, the person. I went in and, first of all, unfriended everybody that I didn't really know.

There were some people that I had met through intermittent fasting that I really liked, and I kept them because some of them were in my new community. Some of them weren't. I considered them friends, some of them who'd maybe been on our cruises before COVID.

So I really weeded it out, and so now Facebook really is my friends. It's people that I have from college, people that I grew up with, people I worked with, kids I taught. I mean, I can go on Facebook and just be me.

I don't interact on Facebook a lot. I definitely do not do any political commentary with friends who I may or may not agree with. I just ignore those. I'm just like, “Oh, what's she doing? Oh, she went to a concert. That's nice.” I'm using Facebook like it was originally intended, and I'm not talking about intermittent fasting at all.

Instagram is a different kind of beast. The problem with Instagram is, being a public figure on Instagram makes people sometimes think that anything you post, they can then feel free to comment on in different ways. I don't care for that.

I posted a picture of me and my husband on Instagram, just Gin Stephens, the person. It wasn't a fasting post. In some of the comments, one person wanted to critique Intermittent Fasting Stories, and one person wants fasting coaching.

I'm like, no, no. This is me and my husband on the porch. If you want fasting coaching, you will not get it through the comments on Instagram, sorry.

Also, don't critique my podcast here. Leave it a review. If you really need to say something, give it a review. I don't want to see that. I don't go read my one star reviews. I just don't, no matter where it is. I don't want to see that. I know they're out there, but I don't want to see it. It made me feel very reluctant to even post anything on Instagram. So sometimes I will, but —

I don't go back in and monitor the comments or even read them anymore.

Here's a little secret for everybody who's listening, most people who are commenting back to you on Instagram, that's someone on their staff doing it, not really them, anyone who is like “an influencer”.

I don't have any staff, I don't have people going in, commenting as me. So I just don't read it, and I don't have to comment or have hurt feelings. I guess that's the way I deal with it.

I'm here to help you if you would like my help. If you don't, that's fine too. There's other people out there that might resonate with you more. Go explore their content. If you don't like what I have to say, if you think the clean fast sounds really dumb and you want to have whatever, do it.

I'm here to guide the people who are interested in what I have to say, and it's taken me a long time to get to this point.

You can't please everybody, and if you try, you'll just make yourself really unhappy. So please the people who you please, they are your people.

Joanna: Yes, you have to have the boundaries. I know we're almost out of time, but I know people are now going, well— How does she get traffic to her books and her community?

So it's your business model. So you've got the Intermittent Fasting Stories Podcast and you've got a second podcast, which are the main ways people find you. Then you've got the books, and you've got the community. That's it, right?

Gin: Here's what's funny, my business plan was zero business plan. I started my first Facebook group in 2015 with no plan. I was a school teacher.

I had no plan for intermittent fasting to be my business.

I just started a Facebook group to support me and my friends who had seen me lose 75 pounds. I wanted a place where it was me and my friends and we could talk about it.

I'd been in some other Facebook groups as I was losing the weight, and again, I don't want to argue with people on Facebook. So that's why I started my own group because I was like, I'm not going to argue with people.

Then, of course, you can't stop doing that on Facebook when people join and want to argue with you, which is why I left Facebook.

It grew because I had a very welcoming community and people saw the positive interactions.

We kept the arguing behind the scenes. It was just a very, very friendly community, and it was heavily moderated.

I had a group of volunteer moderators, and they were wonderful. I'm so grateful to them, but it was still hard to keep that on Facebook.

So I also started podcasting. I released my first book at the end of 2016, put it out there. I wasn't podcasting yet. People just found the Facebook groups, and they found the books.

Then when people would find the books, that would lead them to the Facebook group. When people would find the Facebook group, that would lead them to the book. Again, I was just selling books one at a time.

Then I started podcasting. My first podcasting experience was in 2017, and I no longer do that particular podcast, but I did it for five years.

People would find the podcast first, and that would lead them to the book and lead them to the community.

Then I started my own podcast, that was Intermittent Fasting Stories, and that's really been the baseline for me ever since. Here's a suggestion I have for people. If you're naming a podcast, name it something that people will find, like Intermittent Fasting Stories.

If someone's looking for intermittent fasting, they're going to find that because it's the key word and the title. So if your podcast is out there and people are finding it, it will direct them to the rest of your work.

So all of my things, and I didn't know anything about the word ‘funnel.' I didn't know that word.

Then when I talked earlier about joining this community of people that are health and wellness practitioners, and influencers who are writers, and podcasters and getting the word out there. One of the first sessions was all about your funnel.

They're like, what's your funnel? What's your email? I'm like, I don't have any of that. Then I realized I really did. My podcast leads people to my books. My podcast leads people to my community. My books lead people to my podcast. My books lead people to my community.

You can't consume one thing without finding the other things. If you like my podcast, you will like my books. If you like my podcast, you will like my community. So just really letting people find you and then leading them to the other things that you have.

My whole reason for being is not, what else can I sell you? Podcasts are free. You can read my books for free. You can get them from the library. You can get them from Audible. I mean, literally, you can find the content out there.

You can get the eBook from your library app. If your library doesn't have the eBook, ask them to get it. You can join my community for a very small price.

So it's not like I'm going to sell you more and more things, but the funnel kind of leads people to what they want. I'm thinking about it, I'm saying the word funnel, but it's like my own little definition of funnel.

Joanna: I use ecosystem. You've got an ecosystem.

Gin: There you go. It's a natural funnel. It's not like click funnels, where now I'm going to put you on my email list and try to sell you 42 things a week. No, it's not like that.

By the way, I don't send out email newsletters. If you are in my email list, you get a notification every time a new podcast episode drops, and that's it. I'm not like always trying to sell you things.

Joanna: I love it. I absolutely love this. People are like, what? She doesn't have proper email list. She doesn't have social media.

Gin: What's really funny also in this group that I was a part of, this teaching you how to be a successful entrepreneur in the world. They're like, “Getting an email list is the most valuable thing.”

I was in the summit, and they were like, “You had so many people with the summit that you win the email list.” I'm like, no, thank you. They're like, what? I'm like, no, I don't want that email list.

Joanna: No, that's terrible. That's unethical of them as well.

Gin: I mean, that's the name of the game, it's growing your email list so you can sell people things. That is not what I want to do. I could sell a fasting supplement, but you don't need fasting supplements, everybody. I could sell fasting electrolytes, but you don't need me to. I mean, you just don't need it.

Fasting coffee. I could sell you fasting coffee, but guess what? All coffee is fasting coffee. Get the kind you like. Ah, anyway, you have to joke about it.

Joanna: Oh, no, you do. You do. I do remember you do have a partner with some wine, right? I remember your wine recommendations.

Gin: I definitely will have affiliate links to things I love. I'm not against doing that, but I also turn down a whole lot of sponsors or affiliate relationships.

If I don't love it, we're not doing it. There are so many things that were like, “Oh, we would like to advertise our whatever on your podcast.” I'm like, no, no.

Joanna: I'm the same. I think our reputation is more important than a quick buck. So I get that.

Tell people where they can find you, and your books, and the podcast, and your community online.

Gin: Well, if you just go to GinStephens.com that will funnel you everywhere. There are links there to my books, and to my community, and to my podcasts.

If it all resonates with you and it sounds like what you would like to do, I would love to support you. If you would like to follow a more complicated kind of fasting, you could do that too, but I wouldn't.

You don't need to fast according to the moon, and you don't need to change 100% of what you're eating. You are empowered to find the intermittent fasting approach that works for you, and that's what I will help you do. We're not all the same. I've said this before, someone could follow me around and do exactly what I do and have different results. So my job is to help you figure out what works best for you.

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

Gin: Thank you.

Takeaways

• Gin Stephens emphasizes the importance of updating her book to reflect new insights.
• The community's feedback played a crucial role in the book's evolution.
• Clean fasting is a foundational concept that needed to be emphasized in the revised edition.
• Success stories from the community align with the advice given in the book.
• Readers connect more with stories than with dry facts in non-fiction.
• Word of mouth has been a powerful tool for spreading the message of intermittent fasting.
• The challenges of releasing a second edition include losing previous reviews and links.
• Audiobooks require a different skill set and can be labor-intensive.
• Self-publishing allows for creative control, but traditional publishing offers professional support.
• Confidence in one's unique voice and perspective is essential for non-fiction writers. Audiobook production can be a collaborative and supportive process.
• Self-publishing allows for greater creative control over content.
• Building a community is essential for authors and creators.
• Leaving Facebook can lead to a healthier online community experience.
• Maintaining boundaries on social media is crucial for mental health.
• A business model doesn't have to be complex to be effective.
• Podcasts can serve as a powerful marketing tool for books.
• Engagement in a paid community can foster a more dedicated audience.
• It's important to prioritize reputation over quick financial gains.
• Finding what works best for you is key in any health journey.

The post Self-Publishing A Second Edition Of A Non-Fiction Book With Gin Stephens first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are some of the key elements in writing horror? How can you be successful writing and self-publishing in the genre? With Boris Bacic.

In the intro, ISBNs made easy [Self-publishing Advice];
Written Word Media’s 2024 author survey; Taylor Swift self-publishing [Morning Brew]; Thoughts on audiobooks [Seth Godin]; This is Strategy: Make Better Plans – Seth Godin;

Plus, Orna Ross and I talk about our response to Google NotebookLM, while the AI hosts discuss indie author myths [Self-Publishing Advice Podcast]; Seahenge: A Short Story available now and on pre-order.

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 

Boris Bacic is a bestselling horror author from Serbia, with more than 30 books and short stories.

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

• Unique platforms for publishing horror short stories
• Subgenres of horror and how they have evolved
• Catering to an English-speaking market
• Finding inspiration from personal experience and place
• Deciding whether an idea is best for a short story or full-length book
• Different channels to earn an income from short stories
• Why some books succeed in KU and others flop
• Considerations when writing a horror series
• Networking and community for horror writers

You can find Boris at AuthorBorisBacic.com.

Transcript of Interview with Boris Bacic

Joanna: Boris Bacic is a bestselling horror author from Serbia, with more than 30 books and short stories. So welcome to the show, Boris.

Boris: Thanks for having me here.

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

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Boris: I started writing when I was a kid. Back then, it was fantasy. This was before the era of computers and whatnot. I was writing in my notebook. I guess somewhere along the line, it just kind of morphed into horror.

I didn't get into publishing until I was in my late 20s. I had started writing short stories for Creepypasta.com, for Reddit's NoSleep forum, and after about 20 or so unsuccessful stories, one of my stories went viral.

This was a big thing for me because so many people wanted to collaborate. YouTube narrators, Creepypasta animators, and so on. So this was a big thing for me. Somewhere along the line, one of them had asked me, like, why don't I publish a book? I said, no, no, that's not for me. I'm not cut out to be a writer.

After some time, after more successful stories, I said, okay, I'm going to take the plunge. I knew nothing about publishing, and after unsuccessful attempts to find agents and publishers, I ran into 20Booksto50K.

This gave me a completely new perspective on self-publishing, because up until then, I had thought that self-published authors did not earn any money at all.

So this was a new thing for me, and that's eventually how I got into publishing my novels. Right now, I have more than 30.

Joanna: Wow. Okay, a few questions to come back on. First of all, explain to people what Creepypasta is. Because I think a lot of people won't know.

Boris: So Creepypasta.com, this used to be very popular back in the day. This was a website where lots of scary short stories would be hosted. So anybody could write, anybody could post them there. If they were good enough, they would be approved.

Eventually, a similar sub-reddit came out, which was NoSleep. This is exactly what it is, how it sounds. It is a forum where people can post short stories.

This was very popular back in the day because so many YouTube narrators started adapting them into narrations, and they start adding creepy music over there. This was a very good way for aspiring authors, and even established authors, to reach new audiences.

Joanna: I thought Creepypasta stories also had a sort of internet meme thing, in terms of the sort of tropes.

Are there tropes specifically for these forums?

Boris: There are definitely lots of tropes over there, and one of the popular ones that arose from there was the type of horror where there are rules you need to follow. It became so oversaturated with this after a while, that it's like if you enter a church, don't look over your shoulder. Don't enter after 3am and so on.

So this became very popular. It was very scary back in the day, and so many stories arose from it. Even my first published anthology was exactly like that. A security guard, because I used to be a security guard, who is working in a paranormal place, and he needs to follow a set of rules. There are lots of these that are sort of outdated now, but I can see that even trad authors have started using some of the Creepypasta tropes.

Joanna: You've said “back in the day” a couple of times. So is this not a viable place now? Is Reddit kind of—well, it's not done, is it?

Is Reddit still somewhere that somebody starting out now might have a look at?

Boris: Oh, absolutely. Reddit is an excellent place. Creepypasta, not so much. The last time I checked, it was just not the same. I can see that most of the interest is coming from NoSleep. We've even had a lot of aspiring authors, like me, who wrote short stories to Reddit, then they had them published into novels.

I've even seen a few authors who actually got really big movie deals. So NoSleep, Reddit generally, and stuff like WattPad, these are very good platforms for that sort of thing.

Joanna: Interesting. So let's just take a step back into horror in general. In fact, as we record this today, my folk horror novel, Blood Vintage, finishes on Kickstarter. I've had so many people—I mean, it's folk horror, which is a very small sub niche—but people say, “Oh, I never read horror.”

Then I say, oh, well, it's more a sort of eerie sense of place with folklore. Then they're like, “Oh, okay. Well, that sounds interesting.” So I wondered if you'd come across this in terms of, “I never read horror,”

Horror is not just slasher/gore. What else does horror encompass?

Boris: Well, unfortunately, there's still a lot of stigma around horror, even in today's era. When people see horror, they think either a bloodbath or occult Satanism. This kind of dissuades them from reading because this is the two stuff that has evolved from the 80s.

Horror has advanced a lot. It has evolved a lot, and it has branched out into this multifaceted thing where we can see it in so many different genres. It blends with everything.

We see it in psychological thrillers. We see it in romance and fantasy, everywhere.

It's no longer just about whatever gore is going on over there. It has sort of evolved into this psychological thing. Lots of people who say they don't read horror, chances are they do, they're just not aware of it because it's such a personal thing. It's such a unique thing, and we each experience it in our own way.

Something that is scary to you may not be scary to me and vice versa. This is the beautiful thing about it. I personally like the type of horror like you mentioned in your book. This buildup of suspense, the atmospheric buildup, this is my favorite kind.

There's nothing more beautiful and harder than that, when it just sort of builds up to a crescendo that by the time you realize what's going on, it's already too late. It's not always going to be about cutting off limbs, or being chased by monsters, or seeing boogeyman in the closets.

What terrifies me more is this personal kind of thing, like loss of a loved one. It can be claustrophobia, like being stuck in an elevator. To someone that is absolute horror. It can be isolation.

So for the people who say they don't like to read horror, they don't want to read it because of this, I can say they're probably already reading it. They're already seeing it every day. They're just sort of desensitized to it.

Joanna: Yes, I know what you mean. The word still has the stigma, as you say, but often people are labeling things differently. For example, dark fantasy, I think, has a big crossover. Do you ever label it as anything else?

Boris: So sometimes it's really difficult to categorize it. That's the thing. Since I write so many different subgenres, horror specifically, it goes into so many different directions. Sometimes somebody who reads a thriller, he's going to say, “This was a scary book. This was horror.” Whereas for me, it might be a different experience.

Oftentimes, it's really difficult to label what exactly it is. It's not clear cut. It's not like cut and dry that we know exactly what's going on. It's very abstract. I sometimes write abstract stuff that I don't even know what genre it is going to fit in.

It, again, comes back to what the reader feels about it. So some people are going to tell me this was a very good thriller book. So I tell them, okay, but I didn't have in mind to write a thriller book. This was supposed to be horror, but for them, that was what they saw.

Joanna: Yes, I think it's interesting. Now, one of the subgenres I love—I love some really small niches—and one is merfolk horror, so bad mermaids and bad mermen. So I have your book, They Came From The Ocean, on my to-be-read list at the moment. I wondered—

What are some of the horror tropes you love and come back to?

You said you write all over the place, but what do you come back to? And what do your readers love best?

Boris: The good thing is that my readers are very diverse, and I'm very grateful for that because when I did start writing, I didn't want to write just one subgenre. I believe that just like we have mood readers, we also probably have mood writers.

I'd say that I'm a mood writer. I'm going to write maybe two or three paranormal books, then I'm going to get bored of it, and I’m going to move on to something else. Let's do, for example, cult horror.

Then I'm going to get bored with that and move onto some something else, maybe a creature feature because creature features, in my opinion, they don't require as much planning. I guess it's more straightforward.

When I want to get into something complicated, I go back into, for example, you mentioned They Came From The Ocean. This is still one of my most popular creature features. I think one of the reasons for that is the fact that we have not explored the ocean almost at all. We have mapped maybe 5% of the ocean floor.

The same thing with space. We're pretty much playing in our backyard. I believe that this kind of creates grounds for fear of the unknown. So you can play with sci-fi and fantasy over here, and you can leave it ambiguous because there's so much going on there which we don't know. There's so much we can find.

We discover thousands of species in the ocean every year. New species that we didn't even know exist, alien-like creatures and whatnot. There's just so much going on there. This has given birth to so many conspiracy theories about merfolk and so on.

I believe this fear of the unknown, it's one of the strongest fears. I think it's very easy to bank on that in sea horror, space horror, but pretty much anything where you're just staring sort of at the abyss.

Joanna: Yes, it's interesting.

Just as you were talking now, I was thinking about the sense of awe.

I mean, I go to the gothic cathedrals of Europe, and you walk in and feel this kind of awe at the majesty of this building. I've done quite a lot of scuba diving, and I felt the same sense of awe on the edge of the drop off with the deep ocean ahead of you. Like, oh my goodness, I am so small. I am so insignificant on the face of the earth. I find that feeling quite liberating, in a way.

As you were talking, I was like maybe that is why I like merfolk horror because the sense of awe, in a terrible sense, is kind of where we go with horror. You know what I mean?

Boris: Exactly, exactly. I totally agree with you. It's like you said, you go to this place, and you can just sort of feel the echo of what might have happened. Now, it doesn't need to be necessarily true. I think it's just our imagination conjures all sorts of different things.

Like when we both stare at the dark room, you and I are going to see different things. I think that's the beauty of it, that we can conjure so many things that might have happened there. This can, especially for writers, be very good, but also for readers.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. Now, I'm also always interested in sense of place in writing, and one of your books, I think, is based upon your hometown. So tell us more about Serbia because many people listening are in the US or the UK and might not know that much. Also—

Tell us why you turned your home town into horror.

Boris: So Serbia is a very superstitious place. I think all Slavic countries are. Not all of it ties into horror, some of them are innocuous. Some of them are like, don't walk through the cornfield, don't go out after thunder, and so on. Then there are also the scary parts.

My grandmother, who lived most of her life in a small village, she had a bevy of stories, scary stories. My mother, also, because she was told by her mother. So they told me stories, and they were very nonplussed about this. The way they told me these stories, it was like it was a normal occurrence.

There was a case I remember that was right after my grandmother had passed. On the day of the funeral, my mother came to me and she said, “Tonight you might feel a presence in your room.”

I asked, “What? What do you mean?” She said, “Oh, you might feel like somebody is touching your face. You might hear your name being whispered. Don't worry, that's just your grandma probably visiting you.” So I thought, okay, well, that's not nightmare material at all.

So there were lots of superstitious beliefs over here, like those. Then on top of that, my hometown, it was actually and probably still is—I haven't looked into it lately—it was number one by suicides in all of Europe.

So there were lots of rumors as to why this was happening. We knew that people are very negative, they're very pessimistic, but what was going on? The town was built on top of a swamp, so there were rumors maybe noxious gasses causing them to have mental breakdowns or something.

Then there were rumors of cults, very secretive cults, that were hiding in the woods, leaving clues for people who can join if they manage to solve those clues, and so on.

This all inspired me to conduct an investigation during the writing of Suicide Town, which was my book inspired by my hometown. When you're in a small town like this, I believe there is always something going on.

It doesn't need to be a dark history or anything like that, sometimes it's just the way the people look at outsiders. Whether they're polite, whether they're rude, how they communicate with each other, there is just so much going on.

I got so much inspiration just from interviewing people there, and that helped me to kind of put together a book which blended the old Creepypasta stories along with something that was a full-fledged novel.

Joanna: I like that.

Where we live obviously has such an impact on us, whether it's earlier on in life or whatever.

When I moved here to Bath, I was really struggling with this place. Like, do I want to live here, and what does that mean? My book Map of Shadows has a dark side of it, and it opens in Bath.

Then I found that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in Bath, and I found out all this dark stuff about Bath, and that it wasn't just famous for Jane Austen. I was like, I can't live somewhere that's sort of Jane Austen and Bridgerton. Then I discovered this dark side of Bath, and I was like, oh, yes, okay. I can live here now.

Boris: Exactly, and that's what I mentioned earlier. It's like you can see horror everywhere. Sometimes you've got to squint, but it is everywhere. Back when I lived in my old apartment, there was a radio tower across from it. Every night at 9pm the lights would turn on, and they would blink for a while, and then they would stop.

I would see it every night, and I would start to wonder—and this was the paranoid part of me—what if they're now releasing some kind of a signal to brainwash us? Maybe this is like a secret government experiment.

This actually eventually gave me an idea for my book Radio Tower, which was a very popular book back in the day. Anywhere you go, everything you see, you can see horror if you just look hard enough. I think it's just that our brains are desensitized and they are protecting us from the scary stuff.

Joanna: Yes, I think you're right. I laugh because I have the same mind. I mean, people listening will write other genres, and I think perhaps somebody who, let's say writes romance, and they're seeing that tower, that message, maybe their mind says, “Oh, that is someone signaling their love in space.” Maybe it's a sci-fi romance or something. Whereas you and I would see something darker.

I think we all have our natural tendency as to what we see, and where we find ideas.

It's just being open to them.

Boris: It's like exactly what you just mentioned now. I had one example where I had mentioned my lighthouse horror book, which I'm going to write.

A romance author had contacted me, a friend of mine, and she asked, like, “Okay, but my brain is not comprehending what's going to happen next. Is he going to fall in love with someone? Is he like alone there, and he's going to find somebody, the love of his life?” I was like, oh, boy, do I have news for you.

Joanna: Yes, feel free to write your own romance in a lighthouse!

Boris: Exactly.

Joanna: I mean, I guess I know a bit about Serbia. I'm in my late 40s and European.

Serbia has a difficult political history. Do you find that ever comes into your work?

Boris: That is interesting. That's an interesting question. I do find that the current situation, like the difficulty with the economy and all that, sort of slips into my stories from time to time.

There were a couple of books that I wrote which were set in Europe, but luckily, most of my books that I write are set in America. So it's sort of detached from the political and socioeconomic situation in Serbia. However, since I've lived here all my life, obviously, it's going to be impossible to just completely eliminate that.

So there are cases where I'm going to try to hint at certain things, but I try not to do it too often because I think it becomes obvious when an author tries to insert his own views into a book.

Joanna: Yes, it's one of my sort of things is I really enjoy the research about places. It's a fascinating topic. So I mean, on that, we should say your accent, you have an American accent, basically.

Boris: Well, thank you. Yes, and lots of people wonder how I learned English. What happened? Basically, back when I was a kid, when we had cartoons, we didn't have subtitles, we didn't have synchronized or anything. I had to watch in English. So if I wanted to understand it, I had to learn English.

So at an early age, up north where I live, we speak Serbian and Hungarian. These are the two main languages. Unfortunately, my Hungarian is terrible. I'm learning it right now. My parents had tried to force me to learn it, but I was more into English.

They said that I refuse with every atom of my being, and I instead focused on learning English. This was very beneficial for me because I write books in English. I'd even go as far as to say that my English is better than my Serbian these days.

Joanna: Do you translate things into Serbian?

I mean, it must be quite a small book market.

Boris: Exactly. Writing in Serbian, I guess since I grew up with all these American movies, Hollywood movies, cartoons, read books in English, it felt more at home for me. The Serbian market is very small, but the Serbian horror market is minuscule. It is not existing pretty much.

As I said, there are so many people who are very much against it. I've even had people in Serbia, since certain parts are very religious, many of them are going to ask me, like, “Oh, but what do you think? How would God feel about you writing horror?”

I would need to explain to them that I'm not writing manuals for summoning demons, I'm just writing horror books.

Joanna: I laugh, because with Blood Vintage I've been just getting a whole ton of emails about this kind of thing and how much I must be summoning demons. I'm like, seriously, just read the book. It's not about that. It is funny, isn't it?

J.F. Penn with Blood Vintage

We all have these preconceptions of what things are based on stuff. So I respect people's opinions, but read stuff before you make a decision.

I do want to come onto short stories, you mentioned them at the beginning. You write short stories, you write novels, as do I.

How do you decide whether an idea is a short story or a full-length book?

Boris: Well, the problem with my writing is I'm a pantser, and I usually don't know what is going to happen pretty much until I'm close to the end. So sometimes it's not going to be known whether it's a novella, a short story, or a full-length novel, until I'm pretty much close to the end.

A lot of times I get this sort of inkling for writing a short story based on a dream or whatever. I don't like the commitment, so I'm just going to go and churn out a short story in two or three days. I like that because I don't need to do extensive planning and plotting out for the whole for the whole book. You can just sit down, you can write it, and you're done.

These days, I try to focus more on novels because I like the challenge. I find it way more challenging. At the same time, as my writing has evolved, my books have become more descriptive. So there is a lot of atmospheric buildup, there's a lot of suspense, there's a lot of world building and character development.

Short stories don't really give you the freedom to do that. It's very much getting into the meat and potatoes, just get straight to the point. Whereas in a book, in a novel, you actually have time to do the slow burn.

That's where I got a lot of inspiration from Stephen King because his books are exactly like that. For about 70%, there's nothing going on, and then suddenly it just spirals out of control. I just love that kind of story.

Joanna: I'm laughing again because I know what you mean with Stephen King. Of course, he has short stories as well. I really like writing short stories, and similar to you, if there's an idea that just is annoying me, that I want to get out my head—

I feel like sometimes I can just put that idea into a short story, and then it's out of my head and that leaves room for other things.

Boris: Exactly, and you can always do both. Some of my short stories from NoSleep actually got adapted into full novels. You can do that. It's absolutely possible.

It's just for me, it's easier to adapt a novel into a short story than the other way around because when it comes to turning a short story into a novel, you need to be careful with not adding redundant parts.

There have been authors who have made books from NoSleep to full-fledged novels, and what happened was there were lots of repetitive parts that were unnecessary, but that sort of worked really well in the short story. This is a trap that needs to be avoided when adapting one to the other.

Joanna: Yes, it's interesting because I write these short stories and then I publish them as just short stories on my website, on Amazon, and a lot of the reviews are, “This is too short.” I'm like, it's a short story. That is what it is. It is that length. But people say, “Oh, this could be a novel.”

I haven't even considered turning a short story into a novel because I feel like it's a nice, self-contained thing that, in my mind, is now finished. It is done. That's how it worked. Now I can't imagine it being anything else.

Boris: I'm exactly like that for some of the stories, especially the longer ones. I had just finished writing a trilogy, and it took me about six months. Before I finished writing it, I was thinking of doing a short story and then posting it to NoSleep so I can promote it.

Then after writing it for six months, no, I am done. I want to move onto something else. I do not want to see that book ever again.

Joanna: I guess another question on short stories is some authors think they're “not worth writing” because readers prefer long form books. You might not have enough to do an anthology like you did. They're hard to sell.

Why do you think short stories are worth writing?

Boris: I think there are many benefits to writing short stories, but it all comes down to who you ask. I know a lot of authors who actually make a living with short stories, anthologies, and they're doing really well.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the benefits of writing short stories is you don't need to commit to it as you would to a full-fledged book. So you can write a short one, you can take a break, you can maybe come back after six months, one year, whenever you feel like it.

Then after a while, you're going to have an anthology with really no absolute commitment, which is great. Now I see that some authors, they just put short stories together into an anthology. They sell them that way.

I see some other authors who are actually selling them as standalones at 99 cents. Now, selling short stories on Amazon, and I think this is a little trick here. It's good to diversify. That's the first thing.

I don't want to be personally known as the short story author.

I want to be labeled as somebody who's going to make a groundbreaking novel.

When it comes to short stories, there's so much diversification. There's so much advantage. For example, you can post those short stories to WattPad, to NoSleep, and you can scrape some money up from other sources.

My short stories, they still get offers from YouTube narrators, and they give me payment for the rights for narration. Then you got animators. Then you got, if you're really lucky, these content scouts who can actually find your story, they like it, and they want to produce it into a short movie, an actual movie, whatever else.

There are so many ways, and there's so many rising platforms for short stories where you can post them and you get royalties from it. So I think for short stories, Amazon is not a bad choice, but there's not like one wrong or one right way to do things. You can do it in so many ways.

Joanna: You said there's people making a living just with short stories.

Are they submitting to anthologies through the horror traditional publishers?

Boris: From what I know, doing anthologies with other authors usually doesn't yield a lot of money, sometimes nothing at all. I personally have been in some anthologies and they were not profitable.

They were very good for exposure, and they were very good for getting new readers. Somebody who reads the anthology because of some other author is going to read yours, and he might be like, okay, I like this author, I'm going to check their other books out.

When it comes to earning a full-time living with short stories, I know a few authors who actually write all of their stories, they compile them into their own anthologies, and they sell them like that. It works really well for them, but I think it's all about what kind of an audience you cultivate.

So if you start right away with cultivating short story readers then they're going to be great, you're going to have those. If you start with 99 cents deals, if you start with KU, it all depends.

I have personally tried going wide.

I'm in KU, Kindle Unlimited, and I've tried going wide. Crickets. Nothing happened.

I think it all depends on what kind of an audience you have. For me, it's been years now, I think going into a different venue would probably not be as successful.

Joanna: Let's talk about that because I know you know David Viergutz, and he was on the show, I guess once this goes out, a couple of months ago. He talked on the show about the fact that Amazon didn't really work for his books. He moved out of KU and is basically selling mainly a lot from his website.

You mentioned there, KU is good for you, and you had crickets elsewhere. So I wondered—

Why do you think your books have had traction on KU?

Are there things that you think might work for other authors who are struggling there?

Boris: So I've been wondering about this for a long time as well. I remember David Viergutz and I, we were talking about it for a while, and we were pretty much doing the same things. I was seeing success on Amazon. For him, nothing.

It was like Amazon didn't like him. I have no idea what was going on there. He moved on to direct, which was really good. He's very successful there now.

For me, so what happened was I had first found 20Booksto50K. I published a few books, and there were some traction, but not enough to earn significant income.

I started doing marketing, but it wasn't going so well. I figured, you know what, my marketing is probably going to suck. I'm doing everything I can, but I'm going to have to take into consideration it's probably going to be bad.

Therefore, I'm going to use the method that Michael Anderle mentioned, which is publish enough books that you're going to be earning enough money. I already had three or four books that were already finished, I just hadn't published them yet.

So I started publishing them, I started running Amazon ads on them, and I started seeing more and more traction on Amazon. I believe that in today's era, which might change very soon, the algorithm is a very important thing.

I think what I did was I managed to switch the algorithm into my favor by giving readers books that they liked.

Then Amazon started showing my books to other readers.

Nowadays, for example, I have mostly organic traffic. I do run ads on my new launches, but after, I turn them off. My books are gliding very nicely. They're doing everything organically. This was probably a long history of showing that my Amazon account is doing well.

So if you pair that with something like a BookBub deal, that's going to probably change everything. That was, for me, what really got me into working full time. Up until then, it was going very slow.

Pair everything that you know. Ads, newsletter lists, newsletter swaps, newsletter stacks, running ads on different platforms, Amazon ads, Facebook ads.

Some people run them on Instagram. Even TikTok these days is very profitable for some authors.

If you pair those, and you find what works for you, give it a strong push, and it's bound to work. I've even tested this with some pen names because I wanted to know what exactly worked.

With Kindle Unlimited, unfortunately it's very difficult to tell what worked because we don't have enough information like we do with direct. With direct, you can exactly tell where each sale came from, and you can pinpoint what's working and what isn't. With Kindle Unlimited, you have to guess a little bit.

So I'd experimented with different genres, different pen names, and the result was the same. If you do a strong push, whether it's with Facebook ads or Amazon ads—for me, personally, it's Facebook ads—putting the book in Kindle Unlimited, doing 99 cent deals. For me, that worked perfectly and still does.

Joanna: Are most of your sales ebooks, or do you also do print and audio?

Boris: I do all of that. Audio, print books, ebooks, even hardcovers, but most of my income does come from Kindle Unlimited. From the page reads, about 60 to 65% comes from that. The rest is ebook sales.

Print, not so much. I tried switching to direct just to sell print over there. Unfortunately, selling from my own store was not profitable because shipping from Serbia to America or the UK is very expensive. So I ended up sticking with eBook sales instead.

Joanna: Yes. Although, just on that, I mean, you could use a printer in the US.

Boris: Yes, like Ingram Spark and others. I have tried using those, but unfortunately, I didn't see any kind of sales. So maybe the algorithm over there is not in my favor.

Joanna: I think this is what's so interesting, and that's why I wanted to mention that, because —

What works for one author might not work for another, even in the same genre

— which is why it's good to compare you and David. Again, we're not talking about him behind his back, he said this on the show. He said it didn't work for him.

I mean, I've looked at both of your books. There's a clear genre with the covers. They're not dramatically different, as far as I could see. It was like—Why does it work for one author and not another author?

As you say, you just don't know. You just have to try things, and then if it does take off, as it did for you, you're leaning into that. It didn't for David, and he chose another path. As we said, he's doing very well. So it's so hard, isn't it, to know what to do if somebody is new, or like me, writing in a new genre.

Boris: Exactly.

So many authors give up, unfortunately, before they should.

I know there were so many aspiring authors who wrote an entire series and it just didn't work.

Sometimes books, they're just dead on arrival. I've had books like those as well. I've had books like my personal favorite, The Grayson Legacy, it just did not sell no matter what I did. I changed the covers, I changed the blurb, I even re-edited the entire thing. Nothing.

So I just couldn't understand. I still don't understand what is going on. I've asked around to other authors, and they tell me, okay, the cover is on point. The blurb is on point, it tells you exactly what it's about. It's just not selling. Maybe it's just currently not doing anything for the market.

You can still use those books. So I personally use The Grayson Legacy as a reader magnet, and you can use that to actually get new readers. They read that book, and they're going to be like, “Okay, I like this one. Let me check out the other books as well.” So it can still be used for something.

It's like we mentioned, there's not one wrong or right venue to take. You can go so many different directions. There are so many successful authors who are wide, and there are many who are in Kindle Unlimited.

So I know there's a lot of rivalry between the two. Kindle Unlimited authors are going to be talking bad about wide and vice versa. I really believe there's really no wrong way of doing things in this business.

Joanna: Yes, and on that, a lot of horror is standalone rather than series.

Do you write mostly standalone, or have you broken into series?

Boris: I've written both, and I can definitely say that series sell way better. Leaving books with cliff hangers and then moving on to the next one, it just naturally sells much, much better. It sells so much better that even the pre-orders for the next book in the series, they're going to be, organically, very good.

Whereas with standalones, people finish it, they're done. They need a break. Sometimes we do have readers who just want to jump straight into the next one, but when you finish a standalone, that next book doesn't have to be your book. They can start reading another book by another author.

Whereas if you give them something in a series like a cliffhanger, and it's a good enough story to get them into it, they're not going to be able to resist it. They're going to move onto the next one.

The latest trilogy I wrote, they're all connected, all three books. They're not standalones. Whereas most of my other books are standalones. Only after I started writing the series did I see a significant rise in my income.

Joanna: That's interesting.

How do you write a horror series when one of the things that happens in horror is that people die?

Do you have to just create a much bigger cast?

Boris: Oh, yes, exactly. You can create a big cast, and there's a lot of these swappable characters. Some characters die, other characters get introduced. You got to think of it as a TV show with multiple seasons. So you kind of follow that concept, and it works very well.

You give them a fast paced environment. Every chapter that I end, I usually end it with a cliffhanger. So not only are they unable to stop reading the series, they're unable to stop reading the book.

What happens is I have so many readers tell me, like, “Oh, I lost a lot of sleep because I had to keep reading this.” For me, this is a huge success.

So writing a series, it's trickier because when you write about a paranormal house, for example, I did not see how this can be adapted into a series. People would get fatigued from that. So it has to be something completely original.

Like last year, I wrote a zombie series. This was more of an apocalyptic series, but it also blended horror elements to it. It was not a typical survival series. This year it was like you mentioned. A huge cast, lots of things going on, and each book was centered around a certain theme.

So you give the characters a problem they face. Just when they've solved that problem, a new one arises, and that leads into the next book.

Joanna: It's interesting, though, because you said you're a pantser—I say discovery writer—and I find that even though I have series, each book is really standalone. In that you can finish it, and I'm like, okay, story has finished. So in my discovery writing mind, I can't seem to think beyond that one story.

How do you write series as a pantser?

Boris: Well, mostly luck. You just write and hope for the best. For certain big books like those, like series, you have to have at least a vague outline. So I try to have, like, point A and point Z.

So I know what the beginning is going to be like, I know what the ending might be like, but going through the story, that is where the troubles arise. This is where there's so much rewriting, so much deletion. Thousands of words lost is the most painful thing ever. 

I think it takes a lot of effort too, because when you actually have something in your mind when you think of a scene, and when you actually start writing the scene, you figure, you know, this doesn't sound too well. It doesn't look as well as I imagined in my head. Then you need to change the whole thing.

This impacts the previous scenes, the subsequent scenes, and this is where the problem arises. This is why I'm trying to transition more into not being a pantser, but planning more. I'm just not good enough to take notes like that, and my mind is volatile.

It's like I'm going to be walking through the park, and I'm suddenly going to think, “Okay, this would make a great idea for the story. I need to change it immediately.” So I'm not good with taking notes.

Joanna: Yes, it is interesting. We all have our struggles, but I still enjoy being a discovery writer. I also want to ask you because, of course, you're in Europe—

Is there a network that you're part of for horror writers?

Or just indie authors? Or do you go to American things? Like the Horror Writers Association is mostly in the US.

Boris: Yes. Funnily enough, I didn't even know there were lots of horror authors in Europe, especially in the Slavic region. I know a few authors who mostly use pen names because of the stigma, the superstitions and whatever, and they like to keep secretive.

For me, personally, I am connected with authors from America because that's how I started. I didn't know there was anything else in Europe. Since most of my books are set in the US, I try to be more aligned with that.

I have not actually been to any American gatherings yet. With book signings, I do have one next year, Books and Brews in Indiana. It's a little difficult to go to all those events.

I can see there's so many of them, and I want to attend all of them, but it takes just 10 hours just to get to the east coast. Now, getting anything further than that, it's hell. It's very expensive. I try to limit myself to only the most important events.

Joanna: Yes, and the jet lag is a killer, right?

Boris: The worst thing is that it's not bad when you're in the US, but when you return to Europe, terrible. It just sort of catches up with you.

Joanna: Oh, yes. I really struggle with that. I'm going to Author Nation. In fact, that'll be the week after this goes out, and I'm already like, I have to organize all my meetings as early in the day as possible because I'm up at 3am going, “Woo-hoo!” and then by 4pm I need to go to bed.

Boris: Oh, exactly.

Joanna: It is difficult. Well, we are out of time.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Boris: Well, all my books, since they're in KU, they can find them on Amazon. They can contact me on my website, AuthorBorisBacic.com. Or if they want to get in touch, they can also email me. I love hearing from readers, from authors. So, yes, those are good ways to go.

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

Boris: Thank you.

The post Writing Horror With Boris Bacic first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do you successfully scale an author business? How do you delegate to your team as well as continue to research and write the books you love? With award-winning crime author, Rachel McLean.

In the intro, new Kindle devices [Amazon]; new European markets for Spotify audiobooks [Spotify]; customisable audio with Google NotebookLM;
Amazon Ads launches new AI tools for advertisers;
Enhancing Creativity with AI Tools [ALLi]; My Lessons Learned from 10 Million Downloads of the show; and Blood Vintage Kickstarter wrap-up.

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 

Rachel McLean is the award-winning author of the Dorset Crime series, as well as other crime books, and has now sold over 2 million copies.

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

• Making the decision to scale your author business
• Hiring multiple freelancers with different skillsets
• Money and lifestyle as a source of motivation
• Writing with multiple co-authors and creating a small imprint
• How to write what readers want to read
• Moving your readers from KU to other platforms
• Selling audiobooks direct using Shopify and BookFunnel
• Using AI tools for location research
• Publishing videos on socials to humanize your brand

You can find Rachel at RachelMcLean.com.

Transcript of Interview with Rachel McLean

Joanna: Rachel McLean is the award-winning author of the Dorset Crime series, as well as other crime books, and has now sold over 2 million copies. So welcome back to the show, Rachel.

Rachel: Thank you for having me.

Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. Now, you were last on the show in November 2022, and we talked about how you pivoted into crime fiction. So we're just going to jump straight into things today.

You started out with your Dorset Crime series, but you now have five series in total, and you work with multiple authors under your imprint, Ackroyd Publishing.

How has your business changed over the last few years?

Rachel: In some ways it hasn't changed that much, and in other ways, it's changed massively. So the core of my business, which is about writing crime books that readers want to read, I write in a very similar style. Obviously, my craft has developed over that time.

I'm really like doubling down on engaging with readers, I see that as actually, after the writing, my most important job because that's the thing that I can do, and my team can't do for me. So that hasn't really changed, apart from the fact that it is scaled because I've got so many more readers now.

In the sort of day-to-day management of my business, that has changed hugely. I've now got a team of seven people who work for me. They're all freelance. They each work a couple of days a week, and they do various roles.

I've got a publishing and production team, and they project manage all the books, do the cover design, pull all the files together, manage the editorial and so forth.

Then I've got a marketing team who help me run my shop and do advertising and data for me. I've got somebody who liaises with bookshops. I've got somebody who does AV work for me.

I've also got a number of co-authors who I work with now.

A lot of my books are co-authored with people who I've known for years and who I've been working with as part of my writing group for years. That enables me to sort of manage a bigger business, which takes up more of my time, while still producing more books now than I was able to produce without them.

Also, it's really good fun, particularly on the creative side when you're generating ideas for a new book or a new series, I get to work with other people.

So we'll go for a trip to the location that the book's going to be in, and we'll walk around, and we'll sit in cafes and things. We'll chat about what's going to be in the book, and we'll come up with ideas. It's really enjoyable.

Joanna: Oh, so many follow up questions. The first one I have is—and this is quite a personal thing for me, and also people listening—because I feel like what you have done is you have gone from being an author to essentially being the CEO of a much bigger business.

Like you said, you have seven people you're co-writing. So at some point, you made the decision, I am going to scale the size of my business and the income, obviously. You decided that there was something you wanted to do around running a bigger publishing company.

How did you make the decision to scale your business?

Obviously, it is a much bigger deal than, like me, I have not made that choice. It's something I come up against over and over again, and I always step back from. It's like I actually don't want a bigger business. So what was that moment, so other people listening might be able to figure that out for themselves?

Rachel: Yes, it's interesting because I always thought I didn't want a bigger business and I didn't want to manage people. I think that's because my experience of managing people in the past had been in huge organizations.

I worked for government agencies and all sorts where it was very process driven. You had to do performance management on a certain day, and you had to manage people in a certain way, and you and they didn't really have all that much freedom over what you did.

Whereas I'm finding that managing people within my own business is very different because A, I get to recruit them, and I get to find people who are a really good fit for my business and have got the skills that I need and skills often that I don't have.

Then B, I get to work with them in a way that works for us, and it's really flexible because we're such a small business. It's not like one person has a particular job title and they can only do that thing. People end up dipping into other people's jobs, and we all work really closely together.

I get everybody together on a fairly regular basis. So we've got a Christmas lunch planned in December. We have an away event in the spring where we all go down to Dorset and have a couple of days together.

We have a summer lunch where we get all our editors and narrators and everybody, the whole full team together. So I found that I enjoy that much more than I thought I might. I really do enjoy it.

The point at which I had that light bulb moment, I guess in a way, I went to the 20Books Mastermind in Majorca immediately after Self-Publishing Show last year.

I went to that specifically with the goal of talking to people who were very successful, and had been very successful for a long time and were sustaining that. I wanted to learn from them because I was at a point where the Dorset Crime series had taken off.

The Kindle Storyteller Award had a massive impact on my sales, and I didn't know how to sustain that. I knew that the workload involved in that was more than I could do on my own. At that point, I was thinking, well, I need to sort of clone myself.

I need to find somebody who would do all the business side of things.

I actually offered that job to my wife, and she turned it down.

Joanna: I'm glad she did. Saved your marriage!

Rachel: I'm glad she did now, as well, because we're much happier having different jobs. She has a job. She works for the University of Birmingham, and she's very happy doing that. It's a whole different type of environment from what I do.

I went to the Mastermind in Majorca, and there was a talk on running your publishing business with a team. The light bulb for me with that was the fact that you don't have to hire one person to do the business management.

You can hire multiple people to each do a part of it and to each work a certain number of hours. I already had a PA, Jane. She's theoretically a VA, but she lives quite close to me, so she's not all that virtual. We do see each other.

She was already doing some of the admin for me, but I needed somebody to manage the publishing process for each book. That was the thing that I was finding was a real sticking point for me because I have a terrible memory. I was forgetting what the deadlines were.

I was uploading books to the KDP Dashboard moments before I had to in order to fulfill a pre-order. I was really disorganized. I was thinking, how do I find this person who can manage that process for me?

It just so happens that Rebecca Collins from Hobeck Books, she and I are friends, and she posted something on Facebook about some work that she was doing for another client that was exactly that work. I thought, oh, hang on a minute, I didn't know Rebecca did that.

So I gave her a call, and we had a chat, and it turned out that she had availability, and she had exactly the skills I need. So it started with Rebecca, and then it slowly grew. So I've sort of added one person at a time, and over time people's roles have grown, so there's been more work for them to do.

Rebecca's gone from doing one day a week to doing two days a week. I've got Catherine Matthews, who also works for SPS, she's running my shop.

The great thing is she also runs Clare Lydon's shop. She learns things when she's doing each of our shops that she then uses in the other one, which works for both me and Clare. Clare and I are friends as well. She writes LesFic, and I think I recommended Catherine to Clare.

Having people on my team who have got experience and skills in areas that I don't necessarily have, or who can dedicate a bit more time to learning about something specific.

So the Shopify store, Catherine and I were both quite new to that when we set it up. I said to her, well, I will pay for your time learning how to use Shopify and how to get my store set up. She went away and has been really good at just taking it on board and working things out for herself.

I could have done that, but it would have taken me a lot of time that would have detracted from the writing.

The other real challenge I've got is in my personal life, I have an autistic son. He's not severely affected by his autism, but it does mean that I have to be available for him more than you might do for another teenager, and that can really throw things.

Having people that I can delegate things to, it's incredibly helpful, because I know that my business isn't going to just slide if my son needs me. It means that I've been able to focus on him and develop my author career at the same time. I'm not sure I would have been able to do both at this level.

Joanna: Yes, I love that. It's so interesting, because you must be ambitious, because this is an ambitious move.

Rachel: Yes.

Joanna: Do you identify with ambition? Is that a word you identify with?

Rachel: I do.

Joanna: Yes, but you haven't mentioned, oh, I want to be a seven figure or a multi-seven figure author.

Is money a motivation?

Rachel: Money is a motivation. That's less about the cash, It's more about a lifestyle. I have a lifestyle now that I really enjoy. So I spend a lot of time traveling. A lot of my books are based in Dorset, and I have a flat in Dorset now because I spend so much time down there.

It's right on the beach, and it's an absolutely wonderful place to go and clear my head, and get fresh air, and go for walks, and write, and take the family down as well. We spent a lot of time down there in the summer.

I'm working on a series, which is a spin off series for one of my characters, and each book will be set in a different European city.

Joanna: Oh, I wonder why?!

Rachel: Oh, let's travel to those European cities. I listen to you talking about your research trips, and I think, yes, I want a bit of that. I'm going to Dorset, and I'm going to Scotland, and I'm going to Cumbria for those series. It's great, and they're wonderful places to visit, but why not go to Paris?

Joanna: Then you're going to have one set in like a Maldives scuba diving resort!

Rachel: Absolutely. I've got a series that I write with Millie Ravensworth, who's actually two authors, Heide Goody and Iain Grant, that is set in London on a vintage route master London tour bus.

We've got two amateur sleuths who, because they're running these tours, they find themselves in the middle of mysteries in iconic London landmarks. We were thinking, why don't we get one of them to go and work as a guide on a cruise ship or something so we can do that? So there's a bit of a debate going on about who gets to do that research trip if we do it.

Joanna: Yes, and I think this is important, too, because —

This is a lifestyle that we're doing for creative reasons, but also to have input into our ideas.

Like, I never have any problem justifying this. I do want to come back to that I'm fascinated with the ambition to do this because you've already grown so much. You're working with these co-writers, but essentially, what you're building with Ackroyd Publishing is it's a publishing imprint that does crime books.

It made me think of Bookouture. If American authors don't know, Bookouture is an imprint. It started in crime, and it grew, and it got bought for a ton of money. I wondered—

Are you looking forward into the future and seeing that you might sell the business?

Or that you want to grow much bigger? Or do you have grand plans?

Rachel: I think I've toyed with the idea of growing and publishing other authors. So I do have a couple of authors who are Ackroyd Publishing publishers who are not crime authors. One is my wife, Sally Brooks, so that's kind of cheating, but she writes lesbian rom coms and sapphic rom coms.

She has a day job. She loves the writing, but doesn't want to do the marketing and business side of it. So I said to her, well, how about if Ackroyd Publishing published you? To be honest, it doesn't mean we're working together because it's actually the team who are doing that. I'm not very heavily involved in the publication of her book.

I've also published Hazel Ward, who writes women's fiction. She is somebody who I've known for years, and I've been a beta reader for her books since she started. So it's very much been really, really slowly doing that. Only working with people who I know are really good writers and really good to work with.

I talked to Keshini at Hera, who published my paperbacks, about what it's like managing a lot of authors. It's hard work, and you've got to juggle a lot of different expectations and a lot of different styles of working in terms of what they expect from the publisher. I'm quite wary of that.

I'm more interested in building a group of co-authors who work with me, so that I am still the brand.

I'm building a really loyal readership. I've got thousands of people who will buy my books on the days they come out.

What I do, it's more like the James Patterson model, in a way. So I'm working with a co-author. They write the first draft and I write the second draft. We plan it together.

So what I do in the second draft is I will add in character detail, because I have characters who move across series, and I will also add in location detail, because we tend to write about locations that I know about. Although the Cumbria Crime ones, Joel Hames is getting to know Cumbria better than I do.

I will also tweak the style so that it's a style that my readers are familiar with. So that when a reader comes to a book that's co-written by me and any one of my co-writers, they will be slightly different. They won't just be exactly the same as a Rachel McLean book that I write on my own, but they will feel familiar.

They'll have a similar sort of structure, in terms of the number of chapters, the length of chapters, the style of writing, what you can expect from that book, the level of gore that you get in a crime book, the level of humor.

Although that's different for the cozy mysteries, they're definitely funnier. That's why I write with Heide and Iain is because they are comedy writers, and they're really good at that.

It's about building up that brand and bringing other people into it and involving them to help create more IP.

Also, they're all people who I know and have worked with have known. I mean, Heide and Iain, they were the people who first got me into self-publishing, so it's really nice to be able to involve them in it and work with them.

They both live fairly close to me, so we'll do research. One of the series we're writing is in Birmingham, so we'll meet up, and we'll go for a walk around the locations and find the place the body is going to be dumped and that sort of thing, and then go and have lunch and plan the book. So it makes it really enjoyable working. I'm working with friends.

The team in Ackroyd Publishing that I've built as well, we're developing friendships within the team. It was great when I got everybody together last March and we went down to Dorset to see everybody getting on so well and enjoying themselves.

Obviously, that's important if you've got a really small team. So I think it just adds another dimension. It takes a little bit away from that loneliness of being a writer sitting in your room producing words.

Joanna: It doesn't sound like that's your life at all.

I love that you mentioned James Patterson because he gets a lot of flak because he is the most read author, the richest author, the guy who sells the most books. As you say, he co-writes with lots and lots of different people, in lots and lots of different series.

He does still have his own, I think that Alex Cross series is just his. I think what's also interesting is you have Ackroyd, or you mentioned before, “crime books that readers want to read.”

I just want to remind listeners if they don't know, and I'll link back to our first interview, but you were not successful with your first books, right?

Rachel: No.

Joanna: And you pivoted to write crime books that readers want to read. So can you maybe just go into that a bit more? As in—

How do you know what readers want to read?

How do you add in this kind of Rachel McLean secret sauce that makes your book sell so much after failing at the beginning?

Rachel: Well, I started out by writing books that crossed genres and found it really hard to market them in any of the genres that they were in. What was useful was that I learned a lot about marketing during that time.

So when I did pivot to crime, I already had a head start there because I already had a mailing list that I'd started to grow. I already knew how to advertise and so forth.

What I did, it was January 2020, and I was at a point in my day job—I was a technical writer, I wrote about WordPress—and WordPress was in the throes of changing the programming language that it used.

I was either going to have to go back and learn JavaScript, or I was going to have to double down on the publishing and make a success of that. I was definitely keener on making a success of my writing than I was on learning JavaScript.

I thought, right, what do I need to do in order to reach more readers?

I was inspired by people like JD Kirk, Barry Hutchison and LJ Ross, and looking at what they'd done and the kind of books that they'd written.

Something that was becoming very prominent at the time was, in crime, the idea of the location being a key element and almost being like another character.

So my first series, which I wrote in 2020, was set in Birmingham. Those were the Zoe Finch books. I wrote those in Birmingham because I knew Birmingham like the back of my hand.

It actually turned out quite convenient because it was lock down and I couldn't have gone on research trips anywhere. I was using Google Maps the whole time. I was probably responsible for half the statistics on people using Google Maps that they do at the government briefings every evening.

What I did was I read authors of crime and thrillers who were very successful. So I read books by some of my comp authors who were published by the smaller digital-first publishers and the big indies. I read books by people like James Patterson and Dan Brown.

I pulled apart what it was about their books that worked and what readers liked. I also read their reviews.

I was inspired to do that by, I can't remember the name of it, but I think it's Six Figure Author by Chris Fox. He said, don't read your reviews, read your competitors reviews, and find out what it is that readers love or hate.

Sometimes what readers hate will be exactly the same as what they love because you'll get some readers who are turned off by the very thing that attracts other readers to the book. So I did that, and the thing that came out was the locations and the characters.

So I spent quite a lot of time identifying what my locations were going to be. Also a lot of time working on my characters and my central team, and I developed them. Then when the Zoe Finch series came to a close, I thought, right, where am I going to go next?

I'd been visiting Dorset since I was a child. I first went there as a baby. My parents had a caravan down there. So I know Dorset really, really well. So I thought, I'll go down to Dorset.

It felt quite risky moving onto another series, because Zoe Finch books had sold enough for me to be able to give up my day job. They hadn't been hugely successful, but I was a full time author, which was what I wanted to achieve. So I moved to Dorset, and it turned out to be the best thing I ever did because a lot more people want to read about Dorset than want to read about Birmingham.

Joanna: For Americans who might not know, it's a lovely coastal area, as opposed to a gritty, massive city.

Rachel: Exactly. Imagine reading about Maine as against reading about Boston, I suppose. The other thing that worked really well was the character that I moved to Dorset, DCI Lesley Clarke, she was Zoe's boss in the Zoe Finch books. So she was a DCI.

I always enjoy writing sidekicks. I sometimes find sidekicks are a bit more real in my mind because I can see them through the eyes of the protagonist. I loved writing Lesley, so I thought, I'm going to move this grumpy middle-aged Brummie down to Dorset and see how she copes and what they make of her.

People love Lesley. Some people hate her. I've sat in author events where people have had arguments over whether they like Lesley or not, but as far as I'm concerned, that means she's real in their minds whether they like her or not. She is quite grumpy and she doesn't suffer fools gladly.

So, yes, it turned out to be the best decision I ever could have made to write a series in Dorset. I thought I was bringing that series to a close nine books in because there was a series arc. That's another thing I always do in my books, there is always a series arc.

That might be police corruption or the death of a major character, well, who would have been a major character. So it's Lesley's predecessor. That came to a close, and I thought, right, that's it, I'm done with these books.

I constantly kept having people say, is Lesley coming back? When are you going to write Lesley again? I had about a year of that, so I'm now writing another nine books in that series.

The paperbacks will be published by Hera. So Hera have republished the Dorset Crime existing books in print, but they'll be publishing them as new books in paperback. So that'll be really interesting because I'll be getting new books into bookshops.

Joanna: That's a traditional publisher?

Rachel: Yes. So Hera, they are a small publisher, a bit like Bookouture. So Keshini Naidoo, she used to work for Bookouture. She was the woman who discovered Angela Marsons.

What I like about Hera is that they are all about mainstream fiction written by diverse authors. So their authors are not the normal run of the mill people you expect to be published by traditional publishers.

They were interested in my books because Lesley is gay, and I always have gay characters in my books. It's working really well working with Hera. The way they work, and their ethos and their values fit really well with mine.

Because they're small, I'm sure I get a lot more attention than I would if I was at a bigger publisher. We just work really well together.

Joanna: So I want to come onto something—

Amazon recently named you as one of the top 10 most read authors on Kindle Unlimited in the UK over the last 10 years.

[Press release here on Amazon]

That is astounding. Like, how did that feel, by the way?

Rachel: Oh, it felt amazing. It was really funny because the evening that it happened, JM Dalgliesh was number eight, and I was number nine. He posted a screenshot of it to Facebook where he cut it off under his name, and I thought, oh, I'm not on that list. Then Sally, my wife, she went and found the press release and said, “There you are on the list, you're just underneath him!” So I joked about it with him afterwards.

That felt like a huge achievement because there's some really big names there, and also there are people who've been writing a lot longer than me.

It's only been three and a bit years that I've been publishing my crime books, and to have sold enough to be one of the most read authors in KU in that time, it felt great.

My readers were lovely about it, because obviously I put in my newsletter and my social media, and readers were so pleased for me.

One of the things I love about being an author is that your readers want you to succeed, and they want to help you.

I refer to my readers as my reader army. I do things like when I've got a new edition of a paperback coming out, or a new book coming out, and I want them to buy in bookshops, I'll say to them, “Right, you're my reader army. I want you to go into bookshops and ask them to stock it.”

They'll do it. They want to help me out. So, yes, it was great.

Joanna: I wondered because you're so big on KU, which is obviously eBook first, you mentioned Shopify earlier, and also now books in bookstores.

How are you getting your readers to move from reading just in KU, into buying from your store, buying from bookshops, buying in other ways than they've been used to?

Rachel: Yes, that is a process that we're still working on and experimenting with. So Alex, who works on my advertising, he is experimenting with various ad campaigns that run to the store.

One of the main benefits of running ads to a store, as I know you've mentioned on your podcast, is the fact that you can use conversion ads instead of traffic ads in Facebook. So Facebook actually knows if they're converting, and can therefore run better targeted ads.

It also means that we have access to data. So I know who's buying books, and I can retarget them, and I can upsell and so forth.

Where I've had the most success is in audiobooks because I found that people seem to be less wedded to listen to an audiobook on Audible than they are to getting their eBooks on Amazon. People find it difficult to understand that you can read a book on your Kindle that you haven't bought from Amazon.

So I've been pushing quite hard on audiobooks. I've been pushing the fact that I have a release date for my audiobooks on my website, which is the same as the release date for the eBook and the paperback.

It's a reliable release date. If somebody pre-orders it from me, they will get their file on that date. Whereas Audible, I can't set a release date, I can't set a pre order. I found that starting with audiobooks has been quite successful.

I've been doing it mainly through my mailing list, through my newsletter, and slowly educating people and encouraging them.

My next experiment I'm running, right at the end of this month it starts. I'm running a kind of Kickstarter, but I'm running it on my website instead of on Kickstarter. So it will be a two week period. So I've already got a sign up page for people to be notified when it goes live, and it'll be a two week period.

I've produced a coffee table book, which is Rachel McLean's Dorset Crime Trail. It's the story of each of the locations from each of the books in the series and why I chose to write there. It gives you information about the location, but it's told through the lens of me doing research trips to those locations. It's very anecdotal. There are stories from my childhood in those locations and that kind of thing. Lots of photos, including stock imagery, but also my photos as well.

So that's going to be exclusive to my website for two weeks, and there's going to be bundles and so forth, and add ons, just like you would with Kickstarter.

I figured that it was probably easier, because I'm already trying to educate my readers to use my website, to continue doing that than to add another platform in right now. Crime readers tend to be older and tend to be less likely to be on Kickstarter.

I got the idea for doing this from Elana Johnson, who has done the same thing. She writes cozy—well, not cozy—sweet romance, and so the demographic of her readers is quite similar to mine. She has run “Kickstarters” on her website very successfully, so we'll see how it goes.

I mean, obviously it's the first one, and there'll be teething problems and so forth. It's turning out to be a lot more work than a normal launch. I was on a video call to Rebecca, my publishing manager, yesterday, and we were trying to work out all the dates.

So it was like, right, when does it go live? When do we have to place the orders? When do we send them out? When will they eventually be released? Bookshops want them as well, but I don't want bookshops getting them until after the Kickstarter.

Joanna: Which is not a Kickstarter.

Rachel: Which is not a Kickstarter. A Kickstarter, non-Kickstarter, yes.

Joanna: I think what you're talking about is essentially a bigger pre-order, and I think that's really important to note.

Kickstarter is a brand. It's a different website. It's a very different model.

What you're talking about, and what I think I'm going to do for a book as well next year, is that sort of pre-launch on your website for premium editions that you print after the pre-orders happen. Whereas indies are normally used to you can do a pre-order with an eBook, and it's done, and it just goes out, and not a big deal.

I think that's great, and I'm super jealous because I totally want to do a book like that around locations, but I have so many.

Rachel: Oh, and I know the problems that you've been having with your photographs of churches.

Joanna: Yes, photo permissions. Oh my goodness. Someone's just said to me that you just hire someone and they do all of that. It just takes a lot longer than I'm used to, but I think that's really interesting. On the audiobook—

You are selling the audiobooks through Shopify, so you're directing everyone to BookFunnel?

Rachel: Well, as soon as somebody makes the purchase in Shopify, BookFunnel then sends them the email with the file.

Joanna: Just so people know, this is another app that people have to have. They have to have the BookFunnel app to listen to the audio. It's fascinating to me that what you're saying is people are more, I guess, happy to download a new app for audio than they are to consider using BookFunnel to get an eBook onto their Kindle device, which, again, is not difficult at all.

I think the more people like you and me and everyone, the more people who are actually educating people on buying direct, the easier it's going to be. We have to remember, this is only year one or two of the kind of move into selling direct.

Fast forward five years, 10 years, where will we be then? I think it'll be a very interesting ecosystem of what we can do with these direct things. I love that you're doing so much.

So on that, I do want to ask you as well, authors love to use tools. Now, you're working with a lot of freelancers. You're working with different publishers. You use different tools. One of the big discussions right now for authors is AI. So I wondered—

What AI tools are you using as part of your business?

Rachel: I use ChatGPT to help with when I'm coming up with ideas for books and when I'm brainstorming. So the first book in my Petra McBride series, the one that's set in Paris, I had an idea which was around artworks in the Louvre.

So I needed to find artworks with particular themes, and I needed to expand on those themes and think about how those might relate to characters. So I spent a day just on my phone with Chat, just throwing ideas back and forth, and getting it to identify artworks in the Louvre that might fit with this idea.

Then getting it to tell me about areas of Paris that exemplified the kind of people who fit with the themes of these artworks. Then once I'd done that, I sort of shortlisted and came up with a final list of the artworks that I want to use in the book.

So what I then got ChatGPT to do was give me a walking route around the Louvre which will take me to all of those artworks in the most efficient way possible. So that when I go there on my research trip, I don't have to wander around the Louvre for hours trying to find all these places.

Also, I wanted it to find artworks that would be near the Mona Lisa, for example, but that's not the Mona Lisa. So nobody's looking at this other artwork, and that kind of thing. I got it to identify what they were near and what else would be going on in that part of the building.

So it's really useful for that kind of thing, so I use it at that point. Also, when I've got a whole load of ideas for a book and I'm trying to pull them all together into a coherent structure, I'll put what I've got into ChatGPT and get it to help me shuffle all the parts together and put them into a coherent structure.

I do a lot of the start of my location research often on ChatGPT. So I'm currently writing a book set on the Isle of Arran in Scotland. Before I went there, I spent a lot of time on ChatGPT. It's based around archeology, this book, researching archeological sites, the history of the island and so forth.

Then getting it to give me sources because sometimes it does make things up. You have to be aware of that. So getting it to give me links and sources, and then delving into those, and then finding places I could visit.

I also use Novelcrafter. So I use Novelcrafter with Chat and with Claude to help me with editing. I'll put a first draft through a pass of a fine tune that I've created in Novelcrafter before I then do the second draft. So it cleans it up for me.

I've developed a fine tune that is based on my own writing, where I fed that into ChatGPT. I'll put my first draft in and get it to run that fine tune, so it just tidies up all the messy bits before I do the second draft.

I find also ChatGPT really helpful because I do a lot of dictation.

I'll often dictate a first draft, or I dictate my newsletter quite a lot. So I'll do my newsletter when I'm sitting in my car waiting to pick my son up from college or something, and I dictate it.

I use Otter.ai to dictate because I find that Otter is really good for the accuracy of picking up the right words, but it doesn't add punctuation. It doesn't add speech or anything. It adds punctuation as if you're in a meeting, and assumes that you're different speakers, instead of adding dialogue.

ChatGPT, when you give it something in Otter, it's really good at working out what's actually going on in terms of what's dialogue and what's not, and adding the paragraph breaks in the right place, and punctuation. So I do that as well, and that speeds things up, both with fiction and with the newsletter.

I'm constantly looking for new ways to use it and for it to help me be more efficient and have access to more information.

Joanna: I love that. I do think those of us, like you and I, we're pretty heavy on our research, and we use places. Like you say, if you use places and art, I also have a lot of art history in my books, and archeology and all of that. It does just really help to have a creative collaborator to help you.

I often will do exactly the same as you. I was thinking listening to you, and this is the point with AI to me as well, you are leveraging a tool to make more Rachel. Like Rachel more Rachel, for you to put more stuff out into the world.

You're also working with other humans who are helping you put more Rachel out into the world. I've also been wondering about how many issues people have with AI. I wonder, partly, if it's to do with creative confidence.

You are a confident writer. You've written millions of words at this point, as have I. Your tone of voice, my tone of voice around AI, it has no emotion. Or the only emotion it has is happy and positive. Like this is a great tool, this is really helpful to me, and I can do more with this.

I guess how I'm thinking about this is we're confident that what we produce is our work. Also, you came out of technical writing, and I was an IT consultant.

Do you think our technical experience plays into confidence around AI?

Rachel: I think so. I think the fact that I worked in IT before means that my default position with any new tech is to want to explore it and see what it can do for me, rather than to be scared of it.

I also believe very strongly that AI in itself is not good or bad. It is just a tool, and if good or bad things are done with it, that is because of the people who are doing those things. So if people use AI unethically, that's not the fault of the AI. That's the fault of the way that those people are either using or configuring the AI.

You talk a lot about doubling down on being human. Obviously, I'm using AI so it's not the full extent of my creative process, by any means. I'm adding on. I would never release something that had just been written by AI. I always work on it as well.

I also don't release books that have just been worked on by one of my co-authors. I work on them as well because I'm adding that Rachel. I mean, I actually call it Rachelifying.

Also, I've been doing a lot more video.

So it's that thing of being visibly human and being yourself. So, interestingly, I've been using TikTok, but I hardly ever put videos out on TikTok, but I use TikTok as a video editor. TikTok's editing tools are really good, and you don't have to pay for them.

If you download the video that you've created before you publish it, you can download it without any TikTok watermarks on it, and then I'll use it on Instagram or my newsletter or whatever. So I've been doing quite a lot of video, like little snippets of me.

A thing that's becoming quite a part of my brand is me walking along a beach somewhere, talking about what the weather's doing, and where I'm going today to research the next book. Also, where I'm going to dump a body.

If you ask my readers, what does Rachel do? It would be she finds a beauty spot, and she dumps a body in it.

I always do videos from my crime scenes, and those go out on social media on publication day.

It's me, standing in the crime scene, telling people, “Right, this is where this is going to happen. This is where the tents are going to go.” Forensics and all that sort of stuff. It just brings it to life for readers, and I think makes them feel part of that world that I'm creating as well.

Joanna: I love that. I keep thinking, yes, I must do more video, and then I just never do. I was looking at some of yours because they're on your Shopify store as well on your book pages, and I really think that is great.

I mean, it kept me on your Shopify store page to watch a video, which gives all the signals to the algorithms or whatever. So I think, actually, it's a really strong thing to do that. So I urge people to go and have a look at one of your videos.

As much as I think you're amazing, I mean, it's not like they're amazing professional videos. They're pretty human.

Rachel: That's part of the brand is. So, for example, I recently bought a gimbal, which is a stick thing that you put your phone on and video yourself, and it supposedly self-levels and follows you as you move around. Sometimes it goes wrong, and sometimes I don't put my phone in it properly, and the balance goes off, and it just goes a bit weird.

Instead of thinking, oh, I need to edit that out, I'll just laugh about it and say, “Oh, it's doing it again. I've got to work out this gimbal,” and that just becomes part of what readers enjoy, that you're not trying to create this really polished thing.

I do a lot of video where I'm somewhere where it's windy, and I'm yelling to try and be heard. I have got little lavalier mics with the little fluffy thing on to stop the wind noise. I'm sure there's a technical term for it.

Joanna: It's called the dead cat.

Rachel: The dead cat, that's it. Oh goodness.

Even so, when you're standing on top of a mountain in Scotland filming a video of a crime scene, there's going to be wind noise, and I'm sort of yelling into the camera.

Sometimes I'll end up just doing a voiceover afterwards, but people quite enjoy that. They find it quite funny that I'm about to get blown into the sea somewhere or something like that. So, yes, I think that lack of professionalism.

I would say to people, if you're planning on making video, don't worry at all about it being polished. Just record yourself in a natural way, as if you would if you were sending a video update to one of your friends or family or something like that. Just make it you.

Joanna: Well, I'm excited to talk to you again in like two and a half years. So it's been two and a half years since we last spoke, and in two and a half years, it'll be very interesting to see where you are then because your trajectory is looking pretty good.

Tell people where they can find you, and your books, and everything you do online.

Rachel: Yes, they can find everything at RachelMclean.com, which is where those videos are. All my books are available for sale there as well, and my newsletter.

Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Rachel. That was great.

Rachel: Thank you.

Takeaways

• Rachel MacLean has sold over two million copies of her books.
• She has scaled her business by hiring a team of freelancers.
• Engaging with readers is a top priority for Rachel.
• Collaboration with co-authors enhances creativity and productivity.
• Rachel enjoys the flexibility of managing her own team.
• Ambition drives Rachel, but lifestyle is also a key motivation.
• Understanding reader preferences is crucial for success.
• Location plays a significant role in her crime fiction.
• DCI Leslie Clark is a beloved character among readers.
• Rachel plans to expand Ackroyd Publishing with more authors. Hera focuses on mainstream fiction by diverse authors.
• Being recognized as a top author is a significant achievement.
• Reader engagement is crucial for an author's success.
• Transitioning readers from ebooks to physical books is a process.
• Audiobooks have been a successful avenue for reaching readers.
• Innovative marketing strategies can enhance reader engagement.
• AI tools can assist in brainstorming and structuring ideas.
• Authenticity in branding helps connect with readers.
• Using technology creatively can enhance the writing process.
• Embracing new tools can lead to greater efficiency in writing.

The post Scaling An Author Business With Rachel McLean first appeared on The Creative Penn.

The Creative Penn Podcast just hit 10 million downloads as reported by my audio host, Blubrry!

The podcast is also the main content on my YouTube channel @thecreativepenn, which has had over 3.9 million views, so the total could be closer to 14m. I'm pretty happy with that, so thanks for listening!

Here are some fun stats, and then I share 7 lessons learned that are also applicable for authors and other creatives.

• Start where you are and improve your craft, tools, and technology over time
• Focus on value for the listeners (or readers)
• Everyone starts with no audience, no email list — and no clue!
• It's all about the relationships you build along the way
• People want to know about you. Decide on your boundaries — before you're forced to.
• Podcasting (or being an author) can be a viable business — if you design it that way.
• You will only sustain what is ‘worth it' to you over the long term. Persistence and time in the market make a big difference.

You can find The Creative Penn Podcast on your favourite podcast app, or the backlist and links are here.

The Creative Penn Podcast Stats

My first episode went out on 15 March 2009, and there are now 775 episodes of the podcast. Links to all at TheCreativePenn.com/podcast.

The show has been downloaded in 229 countries with the top three countries being the USA (61%), UK (12%), and Australia (7%), and the most surprising being 2 downloads from Antarctica!

The four most downloaded episodes through Blubrry are as follows:

• Writing fiction and improving your fiction book description with Michaelbrent Collings (28,264 downloads)
• How to use mystery to hook your readers with Jonah Lehrer (28,215)
• Tips for indie author success and 20BooksTo50K with Craig Martelle (28,199)
• Author mindset: Strengths for writers with Becca Syme (27,786)

The four most watched/listened to on YouTube are quite different:

• Improve your dialogue with James Scott Bell (75,200)
• How to sell a million books with CJ Lyons (59,689)
• How to write a novel with the snowflake method with Randy Ingermanson (54,209)
• Story Engineering with Larry Brooks (52,520)

Why are these numbers so different? An audio podcast generally gets a relatively stable number of people listening every week, so there is less variability in listening numbers. YouTube is based on search and algorithms, so some videos get a LOT of views and others get almost nothing.

7 Lessons Learned From Over 10 Million Podcast Episode Downloads

(1) Start where you are and improve your craft, tools, and technology over time

You don't need to know everything in advance in order to write a book, or publish, or start a podcast. Just get started and learn and adapt along the way.

I recorded my first podcast interview in March 2009 over a landline, which I put on speakerphone, next to which I placed a handheld digital audio recorder.

I didn't really know what I was doing, but despite my nerves, I was still able to interview a breakout self-published author in the Australian book scene, Rachael Bermingham. (I lived in Brisbane, Australia at the time.)

I've always done extensive research on my guests and provided questions in advance, but my interview skills have definitely improved since then — both as a host and a guest. Everything gets better with practice, and that includes your writing, too!

My tools have also changed. My recording went from a phone to Skype to Zoom and now Riverside.fm, and I've upgraded my microphone (and pop filter) several times.

I used to just record in any room with the accompanying echo noises Later, I moved into a padded cupboard, and now I have a home audio booth where I record my solo episodes, weekly introduction, and my audiobooks.

Joanna Penn's home audio sound booth

My editing tools went from Audacity to Amadeus Pro, and I now use Descript.com to edit the main audio before mastering with Amadeus Pro and Auphonic.

I still use the same WordPress plugin, Blubrry, which is one of the oldest and most reputable independent podcast hosts. I have always paid for hosting the feed, first on AWS and then on Blubrry itself. As ever, I really love my independence!

If you're not paying for a product, then question how that company is making money. Is your content actually the product? (as is the case for most social media platforms).

the logo has changed over the years as well, both for the podcast and my brand. Get started and reinvent as you go.

(2) Focus on value for the listeners (or readers)

If you try to write a book in a market you don't read, you will likely get it wrong and readers won't resonate with the content or buy more from you.

If you start a podcast without an understanding of what the audience want, then you will fail in a similar way. But you can avoid this by BEING the audience you seek to connect with.

When I started The Creative Penn Podcast in 2009, I had self-published a couple of non-fiction books, and I'd learned so much from those initial failures that I wanted to share what I'd learned.

Me in brisbane, australia, 2009, with my first 3 self-published books, all now rewritten, updated, re-issued under different titles, multiple times!

I was also really lonely and I didn't have any author friends or a community. I wanted a way to virtually meet and talk to other authors so I could learn from those ahead of me on the path— and maybe make some friends.

Over the years since, I've continued to interview people who I want to talk to and learn from as well as share my own lessons learned from the author journey.

I never designed a podcast for a target market. I didn't have to, because I was that market. It's the same with my books. I don't write to market. I just write books about what I learn (non-fiction), or stories I would want to read (fiction).

The content of the podcast has changed over time, and these days, I focus much more on the business of being an author as well as the writing craft.

But I'm still an author and a podcaster, and I'm still learning things, so I am still my own audience and the downloads demonstrate the content is clearly still of value, because I am still getting downloads of the show, and still selling books.

(3) Everyone starts with no audience, no email list — and no clue!

Back in 2009, podcasting wasn't popular, and it didn't really move into the mainstream until the true crime podcast Serial took off in 2014.

Between 2009 and 2014, it often felt like I was howling into the wind, as tumbleweed rolled past in the empty desert. Those were also the years when self-publishing was considered ‘vanity press' and when authors who went indie were generally shunned and considered to be desperate wannabes instead of smart business people.

Thankfully, that has mostly changed, and the fights about indie vs trad have dissipated, to be replaced by fights about AI and whatever is the latest drama in Authorlandia!

From 2014, my traffic started to take off and grew for a few years before leveling off and has remained pretty steady over the last 5+ years. Episodes now get between 8000 – 20,000 downloads, depending on the topic.

But like everyone, I started with no audience, no readers, no listeners, no books, no income from my creative work. I just worked steadily for years, producing content in different ways.

Slowly, people discovered the show and my books, mainly through word of mouth and SEO (search engine optimisation) since I have never advertised the podcast.

So take heart if you are just getting started. Create, put your content out there, in whatever medium you choose, and over time, you will attract an audience.

(4) It's all about the relationships you build along the way

The Creative Penn Podcast really has changed my life in so many ways, and the relationships I've built are perhaps the most important part.

It helped me find other indie authors who were doing what I wanted to do, and I was able to meet many of them online and at conferences. Some of those initial conversations on the show turned into IRL friendships, and others turned into business opportunities and collaborations.

Me with Orna Ross and Sacha Black, two great friends I made through the podcast

There's also the relationships with you, the listeners of the show, even if I don't know all of your names.

Audio is such a personal and intimate medium, and long-form audio even more so. You know so much about me — more than my family sometimes! — and when we meet in person, or you email with your thoughts, I know there is more of a connection because you listen to the show.

Thank you for making me part of your weekly listening time!

As an author, you need other writers for a sustainable long-term career. You need people who understand the challenges of the creative life. You need a community, even if you're an introvert, happy working on your own most of the time.

You don't need a podcast for this. You can find people through online groups, going to conferences, and social media.

But then take it a step further. We are humans, we need other people!

If you resonate with someone, connect with them for a coffee offline, or have a private zoom call. This is ‘friend dating' and it's something you'll need to do multiple times over your career as you change, your friends change, and maybe you change locations and life circumstances.

(Obviously, this needs to be appropriate to your life and family situation, as well as your stage on the author journey.)

(5) People want to know about you. Decide on your boundaries — before you're forced to.

For the first few years of the podcast, I didn't do an introduction. I just jumped straight into the interview. After all, no one wanted to know about me or my life — but it turned out they did!

A listener emailed and suggested I do an introduction as a way for people to get to know me as well as my guests, and years later, I know many of you come for the introduction and might not stay for the interview.

I've changed it up over the years adding the different sections around news and AI updates as well as my personal journey, but it's a core part of my show now.

As a listener to other podcasts, I also understand that listeners come back each week for the host and their take on whatever the topic is. Guests may borrow part of that attention and may have book sales or a new fan based on the episode, but listeners return again and again to the same show for the host.

To foster this kind of connection, whether it's as a podcast host or as an author, you have to double down on being human. You have to share personal things, whether that's the inspiration for your books and stories, or photos from your life, which you can put in your email newsletter, and/or social media.

You need to do this, but you get to set your boundaries. For example, I talk about my husband Jonathan sometimes, but we don't share a last name and he has his own career, so I respect his privacy and don't share our personal photos. However, our cats, Cashew and Noisette, and photos from my research trips are all over social media!

Cashew and Noisette, our british shorthair cats, 2024

Some authors talk about their kids but give them code-names and don't share pictures for privacy reasons. Some authors with pseudonyms just share pictures from their garden or things they like, giving an insight into them as a person without revealing identifying details.

You have to decide on your boundaries, but do it early, when no one knows who you are. Because if a book takes off or you go viral on social media, or something else happens to bring you attention, you want to have privacy in place to protect yourself.

(6) Podcasting (or being an author) can be a viable business — if you design it that way.

When I decided to become a full-time author, I always intended it to be a viable business. I was not going to leave my six-figure consulting job to be a poor author in a garret, so I planned my creative business — and then took action towards that goal. [More on this in Your Author Business Plan.]

I created this business plan in March 2009

I started writing seriously in 2006, left my job in 2011, and in 2015, I made six figures, and then the following year, multi-six-figures, which I have sustained ever since across multiple streams of income. Check out my timeline for more details.

The podcast was originally designed as part of that business plan as a marketing channel to being people to my books and courses, which at the time were all non-fiction based.

Podcasting works very well for marketing non-fiction books, and guesting on shows is a great way to reach readers, even if you don't want to start a show yourself.

The early years of The Creative Penn Podcast did achieve the goal of marketing, but around 2015, the hosting costs were getting expensive, and it was taking more time as I moved from ad hoc to a weekly show.

Amanda Palmer's book, The Art of Asking came out in 2014, which focused on building genuine connections with her audience and personal stories about crowdfunding and subscriptions. It talks about embracing the discomfort of asking, and highlights how openness can foster deeper relationships and support creativity.

Amanda is VERY open, down to doing nude pics and letting her fans write on her body — not really my style! I'm also (very) British and we are not good at the hard sell, and never want to sound ‘desperate,' so I struggled with knowing how I could ask for money for the show after years of it being free.

That year, I talked to Jim Kukral about aspects of selling direct through our own stores as well as crowdfunding. The interview is just as current now as it was back then, especially as it seems indie authors are finally embracing the direct model.

jim kukral and joanna penn, pubsense summit, charleston, usa, 2015

Here's a (lightly edited) clip from the interview with Jim Kukral where I talk about the struggle of asking for support:

Jim: The whole concept of patrons goes back thousands of years. Michelangelo had a patron, right? Patrons are a very important part of the artist/storytelling community, and we've gotten away from it, and we've gotten into this transaction based hard sticker price world with e-commerce, right?

I guess the whole entire concept of patronage is letting people support you. It doesn't have to be one wealthy patron who gave you a stipend to do your art for the next 30 years. You could have a thousand people, or fifty people each giving you a little bit of money that can help support you. And I believe that every artist and content creator should be trying this 'cause it's an amazingly powerful movement.

You need to use words like support. Don't ask for handouts. Say it's my content. I'm giving it to you. If you would like to support me and the work that I do, then you can go here.

It's a little psychological switch in a person's head when they hear, ‘you can support me,' as opposed to ‘you can donate to me.' You have so many fans who love to listen to the podcast. Would 2000 people give you $1 every time you do a podcast?

Jo: And that's the thing, because I've now got transcripts and there's the time it takes. There is an amount I would want to make just to cover costs, let alone anything else. But I have been thinking about this — let's talk about the psychology of asking. I'm very British. I want to talk about money, but it is a very difficult thing for many people to even be thinking about these things.

Jim: This is a tough thing, because we've been told and taught that it's like begging, right?

Jo: I don't wanna do that!

Jim: Yeah, but you have to change your mindset, right?

Jo: It's interesting because I just wrote down like when I thought, why am I having problem? The problem I have is being independent. And that's so crazy because that's what we're talking about.

I mean, like even my mum, I would never even ask my mum for money. I had a job at 13 and earned the money that I needed to do to for stuff. And I've always felt that way but what you're saying is actually is to be independent, we need to develop that kind of trust.

I mean, this is like an emotional risk though, isn't it? What if I put myself out there and nobody catches me and I hit the floor?

Jim: I think it's going to depend on who your true fans are and if you've really connected with them or not. This will not work for people who create content that's not amazing.

People are fans of things that really entertain them or solve their problems. So if you're not creating something amazing, this will never work for anyone which is why it's the level playing field, only the people who really are producing something that people want are going to be the ones who are gonna be able to do this.”

Click here for the whole interview with Jim on selling direct. Jim is a professional speaker and non-fiction self-help author and used to co-host the Sell More Books Show with Bryan Cohen. You can still find him at JimKukral.com]

Amanda's book and the discussion with Jim helped me reframe the podcast.

I decided it needed to produce income as well as be a marketing channel in order to make it worth continuing.

In 2015, I added corporate sponsor ad reads with the earliest being Kobo Writing Life, Draft2Digital, and ProWritingAid, still sponsors of the show, and companies I use personally and am more than happy to recommend. I later expanded to add Ingram Spark, FindawayVoices, and also Publisher Rocket, and Written Word Media.

I've been approached by companies who offer more money in terms of sponsorship, but who aren't a good fit for the show, and it's important to me that I only advertise those companies I continue to use and recommend.

THANKS to my corporate sponsors — you are fantastic!

Also in 2015, I started my subscription at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn and this started as a way for listeners to support the show and get an extra solo episode a month where I answered Patron questions.

The top tier of Patrons also get my non-fiction ebooks as part of the subscription. I also occasionally did extra things but the main focus was supporting the show.

At the end of 2023, as part of my 15 year pivot, I changed the Patreon into almost a separate Community where I now share extra weekly content, mainly on using various AI tools, as well as writing craft and author business audio and videos. I've also started doing live Office Hours and I still do the monthly Q&A audio.

This has dramatically accelerated growth and I now have over 1200 paid Patrons, some of whom have said they would stick around in that Community even if I ended the podcast (don't worry, that's not happening at the moment!)

THANK YOU, Patrons! You are amazing! Come and join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn where you can get everything for less than a coffee a month, or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous.

(7) You will only sustain what is ‘worth it' to you over the long term. Persistence and time in the market make a big difference.

I'm not the only podcaster in the indie author community, but I'm pretty sure I'm the longest running at this point!

Since I started my show in March 2009, there have been many other podcasts that have started and ended — and the same is true of the author community.

There have been authors with breakout successes who disappeared as fast as they arrived. Others stuck around for years, but eventually faded away. There are some who are still here, many who started before me, some who came after me, who have stuck it out through the good times and the bad.

There are many good reasons people end a podcast or decide being an author is not for them. But there is only one reason to keep doing either.

It has to be worth it.

The definition of ‘worth it' differs for everyone, but for me, there are a couple of reasons I continue to host The Creative Penn Podcast.

(a) Patrons and listeners tell me it is still useful and — even though I am an ‘older' voice in the industry now — I still have something to contribute to the conversation, especially in the era of generative AI.

Perhaps my longevity even gives me some authority because I've seen so much drama rise and fall over the years, and I know ‘this too shall pass.'

(b) I'm also still learning, and my #1 Clifton Strengths is Learner! Every conversation I have that makes me think differently, or helps my craft or business, is worth it, and to be able to help others by recording the conversation is an added bonus!

(c) It makes great money! With corporate sponsors and the Patreon, in addition to affiliate links and marketing my books and other things, The Creative Penn Podcast is a significant business on its own. I love having multiple streams of income, so it's worth it financially to continue.

Some people might say that ‘loving' something is enough. That might carry you through for a while, but it's not sustainable for the long term.

I loved my Books and Travel Podcast and happily did that for a few years. The evergreen episodes are all still on the feed and the transcripts are on my blog.

But as much as I loved the conversations and connection, I could not figure out a decent business model for it, and I learned enough about the travel writing industry to see that it was not a good fit for me.

There's nothing wrong with ending a show, and there's nothing wrong with deciding you don't want to keep pushing in an author career either.

Everyone changes over time, and what is ‘worth it' for you at one book or the first 20 episodes of a podcast will be quite different by book 10, or a podcast you are still trying to do years later without enough reward.

But if you do stay the course, your time in the market becomes an almost unstoppable force on its own. With time and persistence and continuous creation over years, you gather readers and listeners and income streams, and together, they snowball into something bigger than you ever thought they might be.

I'm not promising I will be here for 20 million downloads — who knows how long that will take! — but for now, The Creative Penn Podcast continues on, Creatives, and I hope you will keep listening as take another step forward on the author journey.

Let me know your thoughts or any questions in the comments. Thanks for listening!

The post 7 Lessons Learned From Over 10 Million Downloads Of The Creative Penn Podcast first appeared on The Creative Penn.

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The post Writing Historical Fiction And Non-Fiction With Emily E K Murdoch first appeared on The Creative Penn.