Podcast appearances and mentions of Hilary Mantel

How can you tell where the real innovation in publishing is happening right now, and why is it emerging from the indie side first? How do you market your own book when you've spent 35 years marketing everyone else's? John Bond talks about Going Indie and what he's learned about authors who last. In the intro, my thoughts on writing with AI, Charles Dickens and encouragement for the 3-year-old dancing to K-Pop at the wedding, UK copyright law, The end of an era — Hugh Howey; Notre Dame, Paris; Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it's delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn John Bond is the co-founder of Whitefox, a premium publishing services agency, and has over 35 years in traditional publishing, from bookselling to marketing and management. He's also the co-author of Going Indie: Publishing Your Book Your Way, with James Silver. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why 2012 was a watershed moment for publishing in the UK Whether the snobbery around self-publishing has finally gone How to co-write a book with someone, and why there's no formula The pride swallowing involved in getting endorsement quotes for your own book The shadow economy of indie sales that no industry chart measures The hallmarks of writers who build a long-term career You can find John at wearewhitefox.com. Transcript of the interview with John Bond Jo: John Bond is the co-founder of Whitefox, a premium publishing services agency, and has over 35 years in traditional publishing, from bookselling to marketing and management. He's also the co-author of Going Indie: Publishing Your Book Your Way, with James Silver. So welcome back to the show, John. John: Thank you, Jo. Thanks so much for having me. Jo: You were last on the show in 2022. You've been on a couple of times, but just set the scene. Tell people a bit more about you and your long background in publishing. John: I suppose I could say I started as a marketing manager at Penguin back in the early 1990s in London, and that role eventually evolved into running sales and marketing, as it often does. I did that at Penguin and at HarperCollins. Then I ran one of the publishing divisions at HarperCollins, including 4th Estate, and published Hilary Mantel and Jonathan Franzen and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and others. I left that in 2011 and set up Whitefox in 2012, and it's a classic startup story. It was somebody I worked with at HarperCollins. We sat around a kitchen table, came up with an idea for a business, which was Whitefox, and that's grown into the creative agency that it is today. Jo: So back then, did you think, “I can do this better”? Was that the impetus, “I can do publishing better than Penguin and HarperCollins”? John: No, I thought we would solve a problem. There's something very attractive about that whole startup mentality and beginning something from scratch. I mean, I was in my early 50s. I'd had a long career in traditional publishing. On the plus side, I knew a lot of people, and I thought I could get meetings, people would reply to my phone calls or my emails. On the downside, I didn't necessarily have the energy of a 20 to 25-year-old. I knew a lot of people and I knew quite a lot of things, and I also knew what problems something like Whitefox could solve. We set up with this idea that if we could galvanise and organise the diaspora of freelancers in the publishing space and make them available to anybody that wanted to make a book, that that would be quite a powerful thing. These incredibly creative, wonderful people who were below the radar and were not particularly valued or managed or utilised properly. I thought if we could access that and make that available not just to traditional publishing people who know about these people, but to individual authors, businesses, brands, people that wanted to make a book, and if you added a layer of our expertise from traditional publishing, that could be quite powerful, I suppose. That's what I was thinking back then. Jo: It's funny, though. You said these wonderful freelancers who were not particularly valued or managed or utilised properly. That could also apply to a lot of authors in traditional publishing. John: Totally. Totally. But if I'm honest, I don't think I was thinking about that. What's really evolved since we started, even in that 2011, 2012 period, is so much has happened to independent writers, indie authors. The whole ecosystem has become much more vibrant, and what is accessible to those writers is much greater. I'd like to think we've played a part in that. What that's done is put power back into writers' hands, and that quickly became apparent in the business as a byproduct of what we'd set up. Jo: Yes, and 2012 I do think in the UK was a pivot point, because I got into self-publishing in 2006/2007 when the Americans did with the beginning of the Kindle and the iPhone. Really the American ecosystem grew first. I happened to be in Australia, and so I think I was able to escape the negativity of the vortex in the UK, which took a number more years to embrace self-publishing as a force to be reckoned with as opposed to an embarrassing thing in the corner for vanity press. Do you see 2012 as a changing point in UK publishing? John: I think we'd just come out of the Kindle moment, hadn't we? There were all sorts of conversations going on about how that was going to change things forever. I think no one quite knew what the upshot of that was going to be, but we knew that it was incredibly disruptive. In 2012, Penguin, as it was then, before Penguin Random House, had offered to buy Author Solutions for $115 million, presumably seen as some kind of defensive measure as to what the market was going to evolve into. I think it felt like a real period of change. In the UK, James Daunt took over running Waterstones, and he was then ultimately going to run Barnes & Noble. It felt like a bit of a watershed. I think we were lucky in that sense, that maybe in the UK and in London, what we were creating coincided with an opening up of opportunity and creativity, and people wanting access to more tools to be able to do things themselves. Getting this idea that you invest in your own talent and what that could mean for your ability to do things quicker, better. Some of it was happenstance, but lucky for us. As you say, we then became aware that in a sense a lot of these things had come to fruition earlier on the US side. In London, that whole idea of setting up something that wasn't a traditional rights-owning model, but where you wanted to be working with people creatively, felt actually really exciting and timely. Jo: And when you started to work with independent authors, probably a couple of years after that, you started to work with a lot more indie authors and things really started to change in terms of the business side. Did you feel any of the snobbery from the traditional industry? Like you mentioned, you have a lot of contacts, a lot of connections. I came to your wonderful launch party and there were just people from all over the industry. I wondered if you got any kickback, or if anyone raised their eyebrows a little bit at who you were choosing to work with? John: Oh, definitely. And I would say I really think that's gone. You may think differently, Jo, but from my perspective, I think there has been such an evolution in the nearly 15 years that we've been going. So any of that residual snobbery, looking down your nose at people that were going DIY, producing multiple books, learning from every single publication. We've spoken about this before. I remember you sat on the panel of a FutureBook conference in the UK, which was run by a trade magazine, with this idea of looking at the, in quotes, “digital future of the business.” It felt like there were a lot of things being talked about, but not a lot of action on the traditional side. I suppose some sort of awe that there was some magic going on with people who were making a success of self-publishing. But then quite a lot of people looking down their noses at things that shouldn't get through the gatekeepers. I do think that's gone. Or if it's not completely gone, I can see it on the way out of the door, because there's no room for that when agents are struggling to sell books to publishers because publishers are looking at the next indie author, the next Freida McFadden, the next Sarah J. Maas, the next Rebecca Yarros. So whoever it may be, or wherever they're publishing, whatever they're doing now, wherever they may be, knowing that a lot of those people will already be publishing and be on not their first, second, third or fourth, but potentially their 10th or 11th book. It's a race to see who can help those authors, as a traditional publisher would see it, amplify what they're doing. I think the idea that there's an us and them, if it did exist then, which it certainly did in certain publishing quarters, is gone. I used to go to those conferences, like the FutureBook Conference, and certain publishers would talk about publishing, and when they meant publishing, they meant a really tiny area of quite literary, traditional imprints. That's what publishing meant. They didn't even mean publishing to mean educational publishing, or children's publishing, or academic publishing, and certainly not Kindle or POD or whatever. So I think that's had to change for very good, sound, commercial, economic reasons. Jo: Yes, you're right. I definitely have heard, as we go to similar events sometimes, and you do hear agents used to talk a lot more about finding books very occasionally in a slush pile, or doing courses so you could meet people and do pitch events and all this. Now it's often build an audience on BookTok or whatever, and sell lots of books, and traditional publishing as an amplifier, as you said. That's how I always hear them pitch it now, the question of— What can traditional publishing still do when indie authors can do so much? It does seem to be, well, we can amplify you, we can get you into traditional press, we can get you in traditional bookstores, we can help you with film and movie deals, that kind of thing. So that's really interesting, because that's actually changed quite a lot. They don't now seem to say, “Oh, well, we can make sure we pay you,” or, “We are editorial success as such.” John: I think they don't say editorial success or quality or indeed marketing, because that was what used to be said. I think there's an understanding that a lot of indie writers are better marketeers of their own books than traditional publishers, and if you go into the publishing machine, then you'll get your slot. It lasts for a certain period of time and then that moves on to another book. Whereas obviously if you're writing your own book and you're marketing your own book, you're able to do that yourself 24/7 wherever you are in the world, and you will know more about your readers and your audience and how that evolves than a traditional publisher would. What they probably mean now is, as you said, as much as anything, distribution, or even physical distribution. Because to be part of that process, I think that is still where a large conglomerate is able to wield some muscle, with this idea that if you physically want to see your book in bricks and mortar retailers in X outlets around the world, that's potentially easier to do if that is your aim, via a traditional publisher. So it is constantly evolving, because it used to be that marketing was the silver bullet, and I don't think that's the case anymore. Jo: No. We'll come back to marketing, shall we? Struggling with marketing. So let's get into your book. You recently co-wrote Going Indie with James Silver, Publishing Your Book Your Way. Obviously you already knew a lot about indie authors, so I wonder, what did you discover in the process of researching the book and the interviews you did? And I was one of your interviews. Did anything come up that surprised you, since you're already pretty embedded in the world? John: I would say some of it was reinforcing what I knew. So how everything is so intertwined, how in some ways unlinear everything is. People are doing lots of things in a different order to the way that traditionally writers would perceive this relay race of a manuscript gets passed to an editor, an editor passes on. That's just not how it is or needs to be anymore. I still think there is—not even a misconception—but I think there's a received wisdom that when you're talking about self-publishing, you're talking about fiction. The majority of books that Whitefox produces are not fiction, they're non-fiction. Some of them are quite mainstream, some of them are quite niche. That idea of connecting to your audience and your followers, and being slightly more scientific about how you find readers in your non-fiction niche, I think is still unspoken about in a way, in that genre fiction tends to be what people automatically assume the conversation is about. This probably doesn't surprise you, but I was pleasantly surprised to have it confirmed to me quite how much swapping and sharing there is of skills and knowledge in that space. I'm not saying indie writing is egoless at all, but there's quite a lot of sharing of knowledge and what works, and collaboration, which I think is great to see. Again, if you've, as I did many years ago, come out of corporate conglomerate publishing, traditional publishing, there's less of that by the very nature of the kind of organisation. And look, we just talked about marketing a little while ago. I do think this whole idea that the cutting edge of experimentation, it's not traditional publishing, it's indie writers. They are looking at not just how to find readers, but how to fulfil orders, how to make commercial sense of what they're doing from the absolute outset and get-go of what they're doing. And just how now the lines are blurring between what would be classified as traditional digital publishers and the writers who are doing their own thing, or doing their own thing on behalf of a few other writers. Those lines have completely blurred. There used to be this traditional hardback, paperback, X number of books a year, a year after hardback there's a paperback. This is the model we have been doing for centuries, and people doing things on their own. I think that's blurring massively, and the Venn diagrams of people's areas of expertise are just overlapping massively. Jo: Well, I think you're right there, and certainly the hardback special editions with sprayed edges and foil. A lot of us now are doing that first and not putting out the other, or putting out the rest of it at the same time. I dare say probably there are more indie authors with sprayed edge hardbacks than there are traditionally published authors. John: I'm sure that's right. And what's interesting is if you go to a traditional book printer, they are loving the direct communication with writers, that's not coming through traditional channels and traditional relationships. It's great business, it's interesting. I think that's something that's even developed in the last couple of years, that cutting out of some of the middle men required. Jo: Yes, and in terms of supporting freelancers and small publishing houses and printers and stuff, the other thing I've heard is that indie authors pay upfront, or they pay quickly, compared to some of these big publishers who are asking for long lead times and steep discounting. So actually a lot of these independent businesses are doing better under indie author work than they were under traditional. John: I think that's right, and that's what I mean also about the sharing of information and this collaborative idea of sharing creative knowledge. I mean, I'm making it sound like a kind of 19th century cooperative, which it isn't. I'm not suggesting that for a second. It's this idea that there's a lot of people learning a lot of things and there's a keenness to share some of that information, because if you've developed your own readership for your unique creative product, some of those learnings are very exciting. The printers I've spoken to love working on those kinds of things, because they are also being challenged to come up with new ways of developing ever more innovative physical product. Jo: Yes, I think it's a fun, creative time for sure. Things like Kickstarter, which you came on and talked about crowdfunding years ago, and I've obviously done. I think, what am I on now? Seven? I've just done my seventh. John: Wow. Jo: It's so much fun. But now what's happening is traditional publishers are arriving on Kickstarter and all that kind of thing. So we really see a blurring. Let's come back to your book, so Going Indie. You co-wrote it. Now obviously there are lots of positive sides of collaboration, but in terms of any challenges with collaboration and co-writing and the writing process of doing this? Because I've done this several times and I've found it very challenging. So tell us about the collaborative writing process. John: We thought a lot about it before we took it on. What I would say, having done it, is I am assuming there is no formula for how you do this. At Penguin I worked with a married couple who were crime writers, and they wrote books together. They merged their names so it appeared to be one name. I could not tell you, and they didn't share what that process was, whether they were writing different chapters or … I don't know. So I can only speak from my own experience. James is an established journalist. He's great with deadlines. He was very good at chivvying me along when I needed to be persuaded to hit the deadlines that I'd promised. I write blogs, I write newsletters, I write content for our website, but this is my first book. I've never written anything of this length. So in a way it started with the structure. It started with this idea that we would play to what we perceived as our respective strengths in terms of writing. We absolutely were not each writing every third word or anything like that. It was a process of trust in different parts. I thought, James had done some research and will be better at writing that. He deferred to me on areas that he took to be my areas of expertise. We did every interview for the book together. We went over the notes from those before they became part of the interviews for the book. And some of the book's elements are diagrammatic, so those are very easy to collaborate on. I think we tried to be professionally, creatively constructive with each other. So it was raising an eyebrow rather than shouting at each other if we didn't agree about something. A lot of it was down to the editing, and I don't know what your experience was like with a co-writer, but a lot of it came down to: here is something which is quite baggy. How do we, between us, make this as tight as we possibly can? I don't mean copy editing or proofreading. I mean the actual sort of, how do we get this into a pithy, usable, practical but discursive book? We didn't ever set out for this to be a pure reference book at all. We wanted to take a snapshot of what was going on. So a lot of it was genuinely trying to do some research and get people to feed into what was going on from lots of different perspectives, which is why we wanted to get mainstream traditional publishers, we wanted to get agents, we wanted to get indie writers, we wanted to get people who have all sorts of experiences and perspectives. That's what makes it what it is, which is, here's what we think are some of the interesting discussion points of what's going on now. Jo: It is a fantastic snapshot. I think it's really interesting—and obviously you also have seen my book, Successful Self-Publishing, which is on its fourth edition—this is one of the difficult things with snapshot type books. So have you already thought about that? I know this one has just come out, but have you thought, “Oh no, in five years we have to do it again”? John: Well, I think we thought we're going to have to address AI, which we do in the book, and we really tried to caveat that with saying, look, so much may change so quickly, and here we are talking about what we know now. We obviously tried to set the context for where we are now, and we tried as much as possible to make something which would last as long as we can. I think what we did think was, we have tried to make it as international a perspective as possible. But at the same time, we are a London-based agency, and a lot of the views will be from people based in the UK. So I think what I would like to explore is something that looks at potentially somewhere like the US, where I think there'll be different people that would perhaps have different perspectives on different things. So I think we thought about potentially there being future iterations of the book, but not yet. Jo: Not yet. This is the challenge with non-fiction, of course. On that, I would say what you just said around the US and stuff, the successful UK authors all use the same systems as the US. So I wouldn't say that the US … I mean, we all have the US companies we all use. I say Kobo is obviously Canadian, but I would say that we use the same ways of doing things. Obviously you might interview a different author, but … John: That was all I meant. I meant interviewing. Because we've interviewed agents and authors and publishers and they are largely UK based. So it was the idea that maybe there are some perspectives on things rather than systemic. Jo: Differences. John: Yes. Just that. Jo: So then I guess another challenge, we've kind of nodded to it so far, is marketing. So let's talk about the challenges of getting this book out in terms of publishing and marketing. Because you've been on the inner circle side, trying to do that for other people's books, but your own book, this is a whole nother thing. So tell us about that. John: Well, how do you do it, Jo? I mean, honestly, I've loved some of it. I get how you become completely obsessed with your book and trying to make sure that you can get it into the hands of the people that you want to get it into the hands of. We've got some great endorsement quotes, which was a task that, how can I say this? I would call it pride swallowing. The idea that you really try and get people to say nice things about your book and, if they don't reply, you think, “How much do I pester them? How much do I annoy them by asking them again nicely?” And the absolute sheer unadulterated joy when they come back with something positive that you can use and utilise in some way. So that whole process of waiting for feedback, I suppose, and hoping that people are going to like what you've done and help you spread the word for it. We had a launch event, we've given books away. We've published the book as ebook and POD. I think one of the great things about that is it's enabled us to be completely adaptable and make changes right up until the last minute. That drove everybody in my team completely crazy because we were making changes up until the last minute. So, is the book definitely going to be available on publication date? What's it going to do? You know, all of that kind of stuff. Also, just getting this idea that I suppose you can never stop. Is that a very obvious thing to say to a writer? It probably is. You just can't stop, because if you go, “Right, well, I've done it,” complacency is the enemy. Just as soon as you've got that quote, or someone said that they're going to give you an opportunity to talk about it on a platform, it's just another day and you've got to keep thinking about how you can spread the word and tell people that it exists. Jo: Yes, well, I think that's right, and particularly non-fiction, which unless it's very timely and you must get it out right now. But other than that— Most books you just have to keep marketing for years. Then just as you say, when do you stop? Well, you kind of never stop unless you want to, unless you want to retire and just give up, basically. Dean Wesley Smith, who's a big writer in the US and a kind of a mentor of mine in past years, he talks about it as this massive sea of books. And when a book arrives, he pictures it coming down and landing on the water. So the day you launch, it's landed on the water, and then it begins to sink. Then there are all these other books coming down. It's like this rain of books, and your book is sinking as soon as it lands. And your job is to keep it afloat somehow. John: Keep it afloat. Jo: Yes. John: I think you're right, and it's such an interesting perspective for us, who work with a lot of people who have one book. You know, they've spent 10 years writing it. It's their life story. It's their memoir. It's their self-help book. It's their book that accompanies them on their speaking journey, or whatever. Then there are the people who are writing constantly and can't stop writing because they're exercising that creative muscle all the time and wanting to get better, and wanting to improve and learn and understand why this works and why that hasn't worked. Just getting a glimpse into what it must be like for that person for whom writing is not a hobby. I kept saying to myself, “This is not something you're doing as a hobby.” I want this book to be of value to people, and if I'm investing that time and effort into something that I want to get out there, you've got to commit to whatever it is you need to do to make sure you're not sinking. Jo: Yes. John: I will now not be able to get that image out of my head. Jo: Yes. I know there's people listening who don't have a mind's eye, which I always find fascinating, but for those of us with a mind's eye, you can now picture that and you will never forget it. The other thing, I guess, is that, having done a lot, over 40 books now, the inevitable thing is you cannot keep pushing all of those books back up to the surface. So when you do get the bug as such of writing, the most interesting thing for all of us is always the next book. It's always like, ooh, the next thing I'm doing, I'm very excited about. So you do have to pick your battles on marketing. So have you got the bug, do you think? Are you thinking of other books in general? Because as you said, you must be, I guess, in your 60s. John: I am. Jo: You could retire. John: I am. You were talking about that long career. I could. I mean, I really love doing it, and I would love to do more. I think one of the things that surprised me was just how many ideas came up while we were doing the book about tangents that one could take it. I have no desire to write a novel. I don't want to do that. I wouldn't be very good at that. I do think there are some interesting spaces around where there's a kind of intersection of creativity and learning, and how you can develop books that would help people who are trying to achieve different things in different sectors of publishing. So without getting too granular about it, this book doesn't really address brands who want to become publishers, and I think that is something that our business has developed into working with, not just individuals, but businesses and brands. I think there's definitely spin-offs of this book which are not about repeating what we've done so far. And this whole idea of what you've been doing for a long time, what we've been doing since 2011, 2012, it's evolving now at such a speed. I mean, who would have known what was going to come out of TikTok? As you talk about TikTok to Shopify, that whole kind of new ways of finding readers, of taking books to market. As you said, Kickstarter, crowdfunding. There's all sorts of things that I think will emerge, because in a funny sort of way traditional publishing at the moment feels quite conservative with a small c. I mean, the bestsellers. Dan Brown is number one in the bestseller list this week in the UK as I speak, who has been a bestseller forever. And obviously new writers come along the whole time, but the market feels a little bit as if it's waiting now for innovation. I think if that innovation's going to happen, it's probably going to happen in the indie space before it happens in mainstream publishing. So people are coming to us and thinking, does that represent a trend? Does that represent something which could be a way of looking at something a little bit deeper, doing some research around and creating something which is not a long book, not a massive thesis, but something which is indicative of something which could be useful for people. Jo: Just coming back on the Dan Brown is in the bestseller list. I think this is completely to do with the way that traditional publishing measures things. For many years, more than a decade, probably since the beginning of Kindle, certainly the beginning of Kindle Unlimited, there is a shadow economy, I call it, or a parallel economy. I would say that almost zero of my own personal sales are measured by any industry standards. Anyone who makes any money from Kindle Unlimited or Kickstarter or Shopify, or selling direct in any form, or selling books at conventions, none of this is measured by any traditional things. As you know, the New York Times list, for example, does not include Amazon sales in their bestseller list. So you've got indie authors in the UK who are incredibly successful who have to decide, say, someone like LJ Ross, for example, decides, “Okay, I'm going to set up a proper imprint with Gardners or whatever so that I can get in bookstores so that I can hit a Sunday Times list or something.” So I would say that seeing things like Dan Brown on a bestseller list has almost no meaning in the shadow indie economy. John: No, you're absolutely right. We're not even able to see audiobook sales. Jo: Yes, audio. Any kind of borrows, like Spotify. John: No, you're completely right. I suppose I was making a broader cultural point, that it doesn't feel like there's an enormous amount of innovation going on or risk taking within what I would call mainstream trade publishing. And there doesn't seem to be the need to be, because there will be more consolidation. Small companies will be bought by big companies, so there's growth through acquisition. There's still a hope that something will take off that is a surprise, and there's still an enormous reliance on established brands who, even through the traditional metrics of how you measure them, are probably selling less, but still at the top of the pile. I suppose that's what I was meaning. Jo: Yes, and I agree with what the industry looks at as signals. It's just, as we said, a lot of these signals are invisible. So coming onto innovation, at London Book Fair this year there were a lot of sessions on AI, and you mentioned AI briefly, and there is a chapter in Going Indie on generative AI. And of course there's a lot of negativity and drama and lawsuits and this, that and the other. But at the same time, at London Book Fair, a lot of traditional publishers talking about using it, and of course they always say, “Oh, we use AI only in marketing and business, not with the creative or editorial.” Everyone makes this distinction. What are your thoughts on what's happening and where's it going with AI? Is a lot of this stuff not happening in public and just going on behind closed doors? John: I think so. We do have a chapter in the book on AI. We've generated summaries of every chapter using AI, which we explicitly said in the book as well. We've got our Ten Commandments of what we think are useful guidelines. I think that there has to be an enormous amount being done, whether it's experimentation or speeding up for efficiency's sake, or things that slow you down, within mainstream publishing. There has to be more than just the guardrails around the creative process. And clearly when we're talking about metadata, book description, cover copy, presumably royalty calculations, presumably if you're trying to grow your newsletters. There has to be an enormous amount of activity going on. We're driven by the market, so we do not commission. Writers come to us and they either want to work with us and we want to work with them, or that doesn't happen. So we're in a sense seeing what the market is seeing, and that is a whole range of things. As I've said before, there's a lot of sweeping generalisations out there, which if you look back to that Kindle moment, we were talking a little while ago about what was going on in 2010/2011, about the enormous broad brush strokes that were being perceived as a result of Kindle. Kindle has affected some areas of publishing, it's affected some not at all. I think it will be absolutely fascinating when the sweeping generalisations stop and there becomes, I suppose, even more transparency. The thing that people are looking for, isn't it? A little bit less opaqueness as to what is really being done. Because everybody's being so careful about what they say they're doing and what they're not doing. I suppose ElevenLabs is the one where people are openly engaging on the audio side. I mean, everyone is being so careful and cautious. Jo: Me too. John: What do you think? We spoke a bit about AI within the book, and I'm interested to know what you think. Jo: Well, I've obviously been openly talking about it since 2016. I openly talk about using it, and I've got my Patreon community where we talk about how we're using it, and tips on how to use it. But then, because I have been writing and publishing since 2007, 2008, I'm very strong in my creative voice. I'm very strong in my understanding of what I consider to be my level of output, and what I publish under my own name is what I publish under my own name. John: Totally. Jo: So the problem is for people who are less confident, I think, in what they're doing creatively perhaps. I know some people feel like they're scared it will take over or something. When you're as strong-minded as me, it's not taking over anything. John: It's not going to take over anything. And the other side of the coin is how many people are finding Whitefox using ChatGPT. Jo: Mm. John: I'm thrilled that we are emerging, through very detailed briefing of AI, as something that is worth engaging with. Jo: Positive marketing. John: Yes, exactly. As you say, I think there's a lot of negativity, and I think it will settle down eventually. I think less hysteria. Jo: Yes, hopefully sooner rather than later. So as we come to an end, you've been in the publishing industry a long time and seen a lot of people who have disappeared, but also those who've lasted. I wondered if maybe you could comment on those who last, because I definitely feel like I'm in my 50s now, and I want to keep doing this. I'm pretty obsessed with— What are the hallmarks of people who have a long-term career? So reflections on that. John: Oh, that's such a good question. I think there's some common characteristics and themes. So I think authenticity, I think this idea of being continually curious. I think there are people who can't help but create, and this idea that once you've sort of expelled once, that's enough. I think there's people that just can't stop creating, whatever you do with it. But this idea that the more you do, the better you get, the more you evolve and keep an open mind. I think there's definitely entrepreneurial writers who love this idea of keeping their readers engaged, and how that conversation is something that evolves and that collaboration evolves, is fascinating. I think if you love that, and you listen, there's always an opportunity to keep building on what you do. I love the writers who we work with. I can think of a writer who we're working on his fourth novel at the moment, and he is a bundle of positivity. No matter the trials and tribulations, the things that have gone wrong, his expectations definitely not being met with his first book. He definitely has this idea that he wants to keep writing, he wants to get better, and he is getting better. It isn't a journey that has a beginning and an end. It's something that will continue for as long as he wants to write. Every single book that he has published, he has learned and gained confidence, gained a network of connections that he's utilised himself now to not make the first half a dozen mistakes he made on the first book. Who knows where it will end up? But certainly the satisfaction he's getting, and the sales he's getting, are growing as he becomes savvier and quicker to make the right choices and decisions. So I think that's my honest answer to that. I think there are definitely people who think, “Phew, I have really wanted to do this book. Now I can rest easy. I've done my book.” Then there are people who really, whatever their objective, whatever the definition of success is from the get-go, just can't help creating. I do love that and respect that. I don't think our book falls quite into that category, because I think it's a slightly different thing. I think there are people who are still making a success of what they do and redefining that as they go on, and who are really open to ideas and input from different people and are not closed off. I love working with those people. Jo: So where can people find Going Indie and everything you do online? John: Well, Going Indie is available online at all good bookshops. It's available at Amazon and anywhere you buy books online as ebook and POD. Our website is wearewhitefox.com, and you'll find information about not just our book there, but a lot of other things that we're doing on that site. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, John. That was great. John: Thank you so much, Jo. It's been a pleasure. The post Going Indie, Publishing Innovation, And The Challenges Of Book Marketing With John Bond first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Jane's made it to Bordeaux without melting, and it's Fi and Eve with you for the week. They cover Duncan Ferguson lying across Hilary Mantel, dogs flying out of planes, the joy of teachers, and comfortable flatforms.Plus, we look at AI in banking. Harriet Rees, Group Chief Information Officer at Starling, and Lawrence White, UK Banking Correspondent at Reuters, join Fi.You can buy tickets for Fringe by the Sea: https://www.fringebythesea.com/off-air-with-jane-fi-and-special-guest-jan-ravens/Our next book club pick will be a collection of short stories! 'Interpreter of Maladies' is by Jhumpa Lahiri. You can check out our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@OffAirWithJaneAndFi Our new playlist 'Coiled Spring' is up and running: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4tmoCpbp42ae7R1UY8ofzaOur most asked about book is called 'The Later Years' by Peter Thornton.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jane and Campbell talk about their favourite historical novels including those of Hilary Mantel, James Clavell, Bernard Cornwell and Kate Grenville.And they chat to guest Clay Zane Comber, Kiama local, about his upcoming book release. Clay's first book book, 100 Remarkable Feats of Xander Maze, was shortlisted for the 2022 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.KCR: live streaming at kcr.org.au or via the Kiama Community Radio App. Contact us: admin@kcr.org.au

What do we mean by a “good book”? Some people choose a holiday read that demands time and attention. Others pick rip-roaring novels that require little thought. Our bookworms discuss whether art has to be improving to be praiseworthy, and give genre fiction some much-needed air time. This is a full list of the books mentioned in the show:“Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen“Red Rising” by Pierce BrownJack Reacher series by Lee Child“The Hunt for Red October” by Tom Clancy“Riders” and the other Rutshire chronicles by Jilly CooperDungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman“Middlemarch” by George Eliot“Ulysses” by James Joyce“Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel“The Diamond Age” by Neal StephensonThe Murderbot series by Martha Wells “The Martian” by Andy Weir“American Wife” by Curtis SittenfeldGuests and host:Catherine Nixey, culture and Britain correspondentTom Standage, Economist deputy editorAlexandra Suich Bass, culture editorAlex Hern, AI writerRosie Blau, host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Fiction, romance, sci-fi, crime, thrillers, fantasy, romantasyJane Austen, Jilly Cooper, Curtis Sittenfeld, Lee ChildMatt Dinniman, Pierce Brown, Neal StephensonListen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do we mean by a “good book”? Some people choose a holiday read that demands time and attention. Others pick rip-roaring novels that require little thought. Our bookworms discuss whether art has to be improving to be praiseworthy, and give genre fiction some much-needed air time. This is a full list of the books mentioned in the show:“Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen“Red Rising” by Pierce BrownJack Reacher series by Lee Child“The Hunt for Red October” by Tom Clancy“Riders” and the other Rutshire chronicles by Jilly CooperDungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman“Middlemarch” by George Eliot“Ulysses” by James Joyce“Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel“The Diamond Age” by Neal StephensonThe Murderbot series by Martha Wells “The Martian” by Andy Weir“American Wife” by Curtis SittenfeldGuests and host:Catherine Nixey, culture and Britain correspondentTom Standage, Economist deputy editorAlexandra Suich Bass, culture editorAlex Hern, AI writerRosie Blau, host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Fiction, romance, sci-fi, crime, thrillers, fantasy, romantasyJane Austen, Jilly Cooper, Curtis Sittenfeld, Lee ChildMatt Dinniman, Pierce Brown, Neal StephensonListen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“We need to develop better theories of why the other side believes what they do. Having an accurate theory includes recognizing if somebody is a psychopath — but also recognizing that psychopaths are rarer than we think.” — Audun Dahl If you're not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at forty, you have no head. While this sounds like an annoying cliché (especially to people under forty), it does recognize that our moral views change. But, as the Cornell psychologist Audun Dahl argues in his new book Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing, the most interesting question is why our moral principles always seem in flux. Why people who say cheating is wrong cheat. Why people who say violence is wrong turn a blind moral eye to their own insurrections. Dahl is a psychologist, not a moralist. He is not interested in what we should believe, but in what we think we believe. His central finding is that human morality is neither fixed nor fickle. People change their moral views when they believe they have good reasons to — reasons they can, indeed, articulate. The problem isn't hypocrisy per se. It's that we struggle to understand why the other side believes what it does. In morally polarised societies like contemporary America, we over-attribute psychopathy to political opponents. Most Republicans and most Democrats do have genuine moral commitments. But they are just different principles, applied to parallel moral hierarchies. Rather than morality perhaps, we need more empathy. Don't judge. Understand. Five Takeaways •       Two Kinds of Moral Change: Dahl identifies two forms of moral change that should trouble us. Situational moral change: people espouse one principle and act against it in a specific situation — the person who says cheating is wrong and cheats on an exam, the January 6th rioter who says violence is wrong. Historical moral change: the same principles coexisting with practices that contradict them — Thomas Jefferson proclaiming inalienable rights while enslaving hundreds. Both are not simply hypocrisy: they reflect the genuine messiness of moral life, where competing principles create constant conflict. •       Morality Emerges in the First Three Years of Life: Dahl's most striking empirical finding: by around age three, virtually all children develop an intrinsic concern with how we ought to treat other sentient beings. It is not taught as an external rule. It emerges. A three-year-old will say: it's wrong to harm others, you shouldn't steal. No other animal acquires this. It is a uniquely human characteristic. The question is not whether people have moral commitments — almost everyone does. The question is how those commitments interact with other concerns, pressures, and competing principles. •       We Over-Attribute Psychopathy to the Other Side: One of the most robustly documented findings in political psychology: Republicans and Democrats don't merely think the other side is wrong. They think the other side is evil — likely to condone things they would never condone. Research shows both sides significantly over-estimate the other's extremism and moral depravity. Dahl's prescription: develop better theories of why the other side believes what it does. An accurate theory includes recognising genuine psychopaths and bad actors when they exist. It also includes recognising that they are rarer than we think. •       Jefferson, Epstein, and the Exceptions: Two historical anchors. Jefferson: the author of the Declaration of Independence's inalienable rights, who enslaved hundreds. The question is not whether he was a hypocrite — he clearly was — but how someone could hold both positions simultaneously. The answer Dahl finds most compelling: conflicting moral principles applied with different weights in different contexts, not the absence of moral concern. Epstein: the opposite case, a man who concealed an absence of moral concern behind a veneer of respectability. The lesson: some people genuinely lack it, but they are exceptions. •       Elbow Room: The Hilary Mantel Closer: Dahl's two wishes for a more moral world. First: that we understand why the other side disagrees. Second: that we have more “elbow room” — the phrase from Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy — to make decisions based on what we actually think is right rather than what we need to do to survive. Machiavelli and Cromwell operated in a world where survival left almost no room for principled action. If that is becoming our world again, the prospects for moral progress are bleak. Dahl is cautiously hopeful. The creative, restless energy of each new generation — willing to say this is unjust, this is unfair — is what abolished slavery. It is what drives moral change still. About the Guest Audun Dahl is Associate Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He is the author of Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing (Harvard University Press, April 2026). He grew up in Norway and is based in Ithaca, New York. References: •       Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing by Audun Dahl (Harvard University Press, April 2026). •       Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall trilogy — cited by Dahl as capturing the “elbow room” problem of moral action under survival pressure. •       Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning — referenced in the same context as Mantel. •       Episode 2906: Dylan Gottlieb on Yuppies — the companion episode on how professional class morality was shaped by competing incentives. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (00:31) - The Churchill/Adams quote: liberal at 20, conservative at 40 (02:08) - Dahl's Norwegian grandpa and the disputed attribution (02:30) - Two kinds of troubling moral change: situational and historical (03:10) - Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and his enslaved peopl...

Critics Ben Luke and Aviva Dautch bring us all the news from The Venice Biennale. Following the death of the great Shakespearean actor Michael Pennington, we speak to former RSC Director Gregory Doran about his impact on the stage. A new small exhibition Elizabeth I: Queen and Court Is running in London. It includes rarely seen portraits of The Virgin Queen that are normally held in private collections. Historians Tracy Borman and Siobhan Clarke join Tom to talk about the crossover between portraits and propaganda for 16th century monarchs Hilary Mantel's controversial 2015 short story, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, has been adapted for stage at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. We speak to playwright Alexandra Wood about why she chose to re-tell this story now.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

When back in 2014, the Guardian published Hilary Mantel's short story The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, it sparked intense controversy. Critics called it a "distasteful fantasy" and "dangerous nonsense”, while others, our Mickey included, would argue that actually it's a smart, creative exploration of a polarised political era from a literary heavyweight.  It's also now a play, with Mantel's short story in the safe hands of playwright Alexandra Wood. As if that wasn't enough for Mick to want to get Alex on the Zoom, it's opening in Liverpool, famously a bastion of anti-Thatcher sentiment.  They're chatting the brilliance of Mantel, alternative pasts and futures, Maggie's legacy and political violence.  The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher opens at the Liverpool Everyman on Saturday 2 May and runs until May 23. Tickets and more info available from everymanplayhouse.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Currently Reading, Kaytee and Meredith are discussing: Bookish Moments: Book adaptations and giving out book recs IRL Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we've been reading lately Deep Dive: How to audiobook Before We Go: our new segment featuring bookish friend posts and something Kaytee is curious about Show notes are time-stamped below for your convenience. Read the transcript of the episode (this link only works on the main site). . . . 1:21 - Bookish Moments of the Week 1:35 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 1:41 - PBS app 2:31 - A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles 3:07 - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins 3:46 - A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas 3:48 - Call Her Daddy podcast w/Sarah J. Maas 4:55 - A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas 6:55 - Crescent City by Sarah J. Maas 7:09 - @hollyslitmagic on Instagram 9:15 - All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle 9:31 - The Day the World Came To Town by Jim DeFede 9:48 - Search by Michele Huneven 10:16 - Current Reads 11:00 - The Night She Died by Dorothy Simpson (Meredith, ebook only) 16:52 - Courtroom Drama by Neely Tubati Alexander (Kaytee) 17:02 - Literally A Bookshop 21:30 - The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer (Meredith) 22:51 - We Used To Live Here by Marcus Kliewer 26:23 - Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver (Kaytee) 29:04 - Partita by Barbara Kingsolver (pre-order releases Oct 6, 2026) 29:08 - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 29:44 - A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James (Meredith) 29:59 - The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James 34:02 - The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James 35:46 - The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion (vol. 1) by Beth Brower (Kaytee) 43:15 - How To Listen To Audiobooks 55:14 - Before We Go Kaytee highlights a bookish friend post 56:26 - Greenwood by Michael Christie  56:29 - The Great Alone by Kristen Hannah Meredith brings something she's curious about 57:20 - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel 57:35 - Footnotes and Tangents   Support Us: Become a Bookish Friend | Grab Some Merch Shop Bookshop dot org | Shop Amazon Bookish Friends Receive: The Indie Press List with a curated list of five books hand sold by the indie of the month. March's IPL is brought by our lovely friends at An Unlikely Story in Plainville, MA. Love and Chili Peppers with Kaytee and Rebekah - romance lovers get their due with this special episode focused entirely on the best selling genre fiction in the business All Things Murderful with Meredith and Elizabeth - special content for the scary-lovers, brought to you with the behind-the-scenes insights of an independent bookseller From the Editor's Desk with Kaytee and Bunmi Ishola - a quarterly peek behind the curtain at the publishing industry The Bookish Friends Facebook Group - where you can build community with bookish friends from around the globe as well as our hosts Connect With Us: The Show: Instagram | Website | Email | Threads | Substack | Youtube The Hosts and Regulars: Meredith | Kaytee | Mary | Roxanna Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans Affiliate Disclosure: All affiliate links go to Bookshop unless otherwise noted. Shopping here helps keep the lights on and benefits indie bookstores. Thanks for your support!

On this episode of Currently Reading, Meredith and Kaytee are discussing: Bookish Moments: Kaytee's San Francisco bookstore adventure and Meredith's Wolf Hall slow read Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we've been reading lately Deep Dive: Boss My TBR - helping two listeners prioritize their reading stacks Before We Go: our new segment featuring bookish friend posts and TBR triage Show notes are time-stamped below for your convenience. Read the transcript of the episode (this link only works on the main site). .  .  .  :10 Bite Size Intro 1:04 - Currently Reading on Youtube 2:39 - Bookish Moments of the Week 3:13 - City Lights Bookstore 5:00 - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel  5:35 - Footnotes and Tangents 07:53 - Current Reads 8:01 - History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook (Kaytee) 11:18 - Sarah's Bookshelves Live 11:52 - Sphere by Michael Crichton (Meredith) 14:21 - Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton 15:58 - The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton 16:02 - Timeline by Michael Crichton 16:15 - Outlander by Diana Gabaldon 16:34 - Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb (Kaytee) 22:12 - The Sleeper Lies by Andrea Mara (Meredith, Blackwell's link) 24:01 - All Her Fault by Andrea Mara 26:11 - Someone in the Attic by Andrea Mara 26:12 - The Other Side of the Wall by Andrea Mara (Blackwell's link) 26:54 - The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (Kaytee) 28:25 - CR Season 2: Episode 22 when Kayytee first brought The Dutch House 29:20 - Commonwealth by Ann Patchett 31:48 - Tom Lake by Ann Patchett 33:30 - Snap by Belinda Bauer (Meredith) 37:30 - Boss My TBR 38:11 - Gretchen's Stack For Whom the Belle Tolls by Jaysea Lynn When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain Bride by Ali Hazelwood A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers Gilded by Marissa Meyer 39:29 - Field Day Books and Bottles 39:35 - Cannon Beach Book Company 43:09 - Lauren's Stack I, Medusa by Ayana Gray Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven Fear and Fury by Heather Ann Thompson Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman 44:26 - Fabled Bookshop 44:49 - Blood in the Water by Heather Ann Thompson 48:32 - Before We Go Meredith highlights bookish friend posts from the Facebook group 50:08 - Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson 50:13 - On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder 51:39 - Nothing Much Happens podcast 52:57 - Currently Reading Patreon 53:14 - Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots 53:39 - Timeline by Michael Crichton Kaytee's TBR Triage: Kaytee brings a book that has been on her TBR for a long time and decides whether to keep and read, or remove from her TBR. 54:28 - The Sinister Booksellers of Bath (Foyles link) 54:31 - Foyle's 54:56 - The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix (Foyles link) Support Us: Become a Bookish Friend | Grab Some Merch Shop Bookshop dot org | Shop Amazon Bookish Friends Receive: The Indie Press List with a curated list of five books hand sold by the indie of the month. February's list is a special romance curated list from Open Door Romance, The Novel Neighbor's Romance adjacent bookstore in Plainville, MA. Love and Chili Peppers with Kaytee and Rebekah - romance lovers get their due with this special episode focused entirely on the best selling genre fiction in the business All Things Murderful with Meredith and Elizabeth - special content for the scary-lovers, brought to you with the behind-the-scenes insights of an independent bookseller From the Editor's Desk with Kaytee and Bunmi Ishola - a quarterly peek behind the curtain at the publishing industry The Bookish Friends Facebook Group - where you can build community with bookish friends from around the globe as well as our hosts Connect With Us: The Show: Instagram | Website | Email | Threads The Hosts and Regulars: Meredith | Kaytee | Mary | Roxanna Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans Affiliate Disclosure: All affiliate links go to Bookshop unless otherwise noted. Shopping here helps keep the lights on and benefits indie bookstores. Thanks for your support!

Welcome to another episode of the Bowie Book Club, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie's favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which tells the tale of arch-fixer Thomas Cromwell without a mention of turkey legs.

On this episode of Currently Reading, Meredith and Kaytee are discussing: Bookish Moments: experimenting with our reading and taking on choker books Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we've been reading lately Deep Dive: answering the questions of how or why we rate our books The Fountain: we visit our perfect fountain to make wishes about our reading lives Show notes are time-stamped below for your convenience. Read the transcript of the episode (this link only works on the main site). .  .  .  2:39 - Our Bookish Moments of the Week 3:01- The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor 3:05 - Bookshelf Thomasville 3:07 - From the Front Porch podcast 3:31 - It by Stephen King 4:53 - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (#1 in the Cromwell series) 5:30 - Footnotes and Tangents on Instagram 6:45 - The Stand by Stephen King 6:47 - Laura Tremaine on Substack 8:52 - Our Current Reads 9:00 - Matched by Ally Condie (Kaytee) 9:32 - The Giver by Lois Lowry 11:26 - The Selection by Kiera Cass 11:30 - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins 13:04 - Turns of Fate by Anne Bishop (Meredith) 14:45 - The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett 18:15 - Cultish by Amanda Montell (Kaytee) 18:21 - Wordslut by Amanda Montell 21:52 - Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain (Meredith) 23:00 - The Secret by Rhonda Byrne 23:35 - The Painted Porch 23:40 - The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holliday 26:05 - The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron 27:37 - When the Tides Held the Moon by Vanessa Vida Kelley (Kaytee) 30:43 - CAWPILE 31:38 - The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark (Meredith) 35:51 - The God of the Woods by Liz Moore 36:28 - The Last Flight by Julie Clark 36:50 - Deep Dive: How And Why We Rate Our Reads 37:53 - A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson 37:59 - Dante and Aristotle Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz 38:04 - Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes 38:14 - Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito  49:41 - CAWPILE system 51:53 - Meet Us At The Fountain 52:41 - I wish that we would all pick one small way to challenge our reading this year. (Kaytee) 54:23 - I wish you would sign up for our newsletter! (Meredith) 54:25 - Sign up for the newsletter on our website  Support Us: Become a Bookish Friend | Grab Some Merch Shop Bookshop dot org | Shop Amazon Bookish Friends Receive: The Indie Press List with a curated list of five books hand sold by the indie of the month. January's IPL is our annual visit to Fabled Bookshop in Waco, Texas. Love and Chili Peppers with Kaytee and Rebekah - romance lovers get their due with this special episode focused entirely on the best selling genre fiction in the business.  All Things Murderful with Meredith and Elizabeth - special content for the scary-lovers, brought to you with the behind-the-scenes insights of an independent bookseller From the Editor's Desk with Kaytee and Bunmi Ishola - a quarterly peek behind the curtain at the publishing industry The Bookish Friends Facebook Group - where you can build community with bookish friends from around the globe as well as our hosts Connect With Us: The Show: Instagram | Website | Email | Threads The Hosts and Regulars: Meredith | Kaytee | Mary | Roxanna Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans Affiliate Disclosure: All affiliate links go to Bookshop unless otherwise noted. Shopping here helps keep the lights on and benefits indie bookstores. Thanks for your support!

Happy New Year! We're excited to be podcasting for another year. For our first podcast of 2026 we decided to wrap up our holiday season by talking about the books we received and the holiday movies we watched. In addition, we also decided to offer a glimpse into the content our followers over at Patreon can be expecting. We have Peter's new reading project, plus nominations for the 2026 author project. And finally, we close with our initial thoughts on Hilary Mantel's novel "A Place of Greater Safety." Jam packed episode to kick off the new year. Enjoy!Contact Us:Instagram @therewillbbooksTwitter @therewillbbooksEmail willbebooks@gmail.comGoodreads: Therewillbebooksko-fi.com/therewillbbookspatreon.com/therewillbbooks

Liz and Sarah dive into the Mailroom with an all listener questions episode! What are their top tips for making sure your voice is heard in a meeting? Would Liz rather be a Traitor or a Faithful? Where in the world does Sarah most want to shoot a show? What do they think about the sale of WBD? They answer all these questions and many more! Sign up for Liz & Sarah’s free weekly Substack newsletter at https://happierinhollywoodpod.substack.com. It will come right to your inbox! Get in touch on Instagram: @Sfain & @LizCraft Get in touch on Threads: @Sfain & @LizCra Visit our website: https://happierinhollywood.com Join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/HappierinHollywood/ Happier in Hollywood is part of ‘The Onward Project,’ a family of podcasts brought together by Gretchen Rubin—all about how to make your life better. Check out the other Onward Project podcasts—Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and Side Hustle School . If you liked this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends! LINKS: A Man on the Inside Season Two trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6UXdDbuNFc The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman: https://amzn.to/4aeLcZa Actress of a Certain Age by Jeff Hiller: https://amzn.to/4s6AoD1 How to Lose Your Mother by Molly Jong-Fast: https://amzn.to/3MC5emG Squid Game: The Challenge Season Two trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ4D7HA7Ov4 War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy: https://amzn.to/4j8nOPy Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel: https://amzn.to/48u01Vj Simon Haisell’s Footnotes and Tangents: https://footnotesandtangents.substack.com We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade by Elyse Arons: https://amzn.to/4j2mxtl Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/hollywood/ #rulapod #adSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Executive Coach and Friend of the Pod Michael Melcher joins Sarah to discuss the benefits of networking up. Making connections with higher ups is intimidating but worth it! Michael stays on as Guest Host to discuss the idea of an Admin Night— which is, essentially, a group Power Hour. Then, in Take Two, they discuss their current personal canaries in a coal mine. This week’s Hollywood Hack is Slidelock Carabiners! Finally, Sarah recommends the novel Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel and Simon Haisell’s accompanying Slow Read. Sign up for Liz & Sarah’s free weekly Substack newsletter at https://happierinhollywoodpod.substack.com. It will come right to your inbox! Get in touch on Instagram: @Sfain & @LizCraft Get in touch on Threads: @Sfain & @LizCra Visit our website: https://happierinhollywood.com Join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/HappierinHollywood/ Happier in Hollywood is part of ‘The Onward Project,’ a family of podcasts brought together by Gretchen Rubin—all about how to make your life better. Check out the other Onward Project podcasts—Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and Side Hustle School . If you liked this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends! LINKS: Michael Melcher: https://m2leaders.com/team/michael-melcher/ Your Invisible Network, by Michael Melcher: https://amzn.to/440xy87 Slidelock Carabiners: https://amzn.to/4pHVLbs Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel: https://amzn.to/48u01Vj Simon Haisell’s Footnotes and Tangents: https://footnotesandtangents.substack.com Photo by Thomas Le on Unsplash Note: Go to the Happier In Hollywood Facebook Group for Liz and Sarah’s extensive Teens/Tweens Gift Guide. Thanks to listeners for such great ideas! Link below. https://www.facebook.com/groups/903150719832696/permalink/3081705578643855/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if the key to surviving cutthroat office politics was mastered in 1536?  Juliet Corbett joins me to discuss Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall + Bring Up the Bodies - and the business lessons from Thomas Cromwell's rise at Henry VIII's court. We discuss how Cromwell mastered managing up to volatile leaders, why his network crossed every level of hierarchy + why mentors are meant to be outgrown. Plus, why checking your sources matters + how training people who leave still benefits you. Look for more Classics episodes where we take stories that definitely aren't business books + treat them as full-on business texts. Books discussed in this episode: Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel The Mirror and the Light - Hilary Mantel Juliet's Website + Free Ebook: consultjuliet.co.uk/ebook Juliet's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/julietcorbett ==== If you'd like my help with your Business go to www.lizscully.com/endlessClients ==== And don't forget to get your reading list of the 10 essential reads for every successful biz owner - these are the books Liz recommends almost on the daily to her strategy + Mastermind clients. This isn't your usual list of biz books, these answer the challenges you've actually got coming up right now. Helpful, quick to read and very timely. Click here lizscully.com/reading to get your book list

 I'm so excited to say that today's guest on the Great Women Artist Podcast is the esteemed curator, writer, broadcaster and cultural trailblazer, Ekow Eshun. Born in North-west London in 1968, Eshun has been at the forefront of creative culture for decades. Writing across subjects and presenting documentaries, Eshun has curated groundbreaking exhibitions. From the 2022 In the Black Fantastic, at the Hayward in London – to The Time Is Always Now, a study of the Black figure and its representation in contemporary art, that began at London's National Portrait Gallery, and has since travelled across the US. The author of multiple books: in 2006, he published his memoir: “Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa” an exploration of identity and race, that sees Eshun travelling through Ghana in search of his roots. And in 2024, The Strangers, a stunning work of creative nonfiction that tells the story of five pioneering Black men set against a vivid backdrop of art, culture, and resistance. So for this special episode we are going to deep dive into the women writers and artists who have influenced his life and career, including Morrison, the pioneering science fiction writer, Octavia E. Butler, Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu, the Rotterdam based artist Ellen Gallagher, and photographer Liz Johnson Artur. Because, as Eshun himself says, “The great thing about working with artists is they don't walk a straight line or think along linear paths; they think in patterns, allowing us to approach long-established conversations from a novel perspective.” Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) Hilary Mantel (1952–2022) Wangechi Mutu (b.1972) Ellen Gallagher (b.1965) Liz Johnson Artur (1964) Toni Morrison (1931–2019) Exhibitions mentioned: In the Black Fantastic, 2022, Hayward Gallery, London: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/hayward-gallery/past-exhibitions/in-the-black-fantastic/ The Time Is Always Now, 2024-present, touring: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/the-time-is-always-now The Clearing, space Un gallery, Tokyo, November 2025; https://www.artweektokyo.com/en/institution-gallery/space-un/ Books mentioned: Octavia Butler - Parable of the Sower (1993) https://www.waterstones.com/book/parable-of-the-sower/octavia-e-butler/9781472263667 Octavia Butler - XenoGenesis trilogy; Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989) https://www.octaviabutler.com/xenogenesis-series Hilary Mantel - The Wolf Hall trilogy; Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012), and The Mirror & the Light (2020) https://www.waterstones.com/book/wolf-hall/hilary-mantel/9780008381691 Ekow Eshun - Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa (2006): https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780141010960?sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=117976&awc=3787_1761656125_d069bd054bf50de1a9bfc45991a52d17&utm_source=117976&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=Penguin+Books Ekow Eshun - The Strangers (2024): https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-strangers/ekow-eshun/9780241990698 Herman Melville - Moby Dick (1851) https://www.waterstones.com/book/moby-dick/herman-melville/andrew-delbanco/9780142437247 Toni Morrison - Beloved (1987) https://www.waterstones.com/book/beloved/toni-morrison/9780099760115

Welcome back to another Friday special! This week's bonus episode features an interview with Nicholas Pearson, editor and friend to Hilary Mantel.It's been three years since the Wolf Hall author and two time Booker prize winner Hilary Mantel died. Now, her friends and colleagues are honouring her memory with a literary prize. The Hilary Mantel prize seeks to support unpublished writers, with the aim of offering mentoring and financial support. You can find out more here: https://hilarymantelprize.com If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Podcast Producer: Eve Salusbury Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Director, writer and producer Peter Kosminsky, who directed of the BBC's adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, has worked in the television industry for 45 years. The BAFTA and Golden Globe winner is one of the most respected voices in the industry.Kosminsky spoke to the New Statesman's Hannah Barnes in a wide ranging discussion about the state of British television, and why he is calling upon the government to stand up for public service broadcasting against the might of the streaming giants. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst is an engrossing true account of a shocking shipwreck that's part love story and part peril on the high seas. Sophie joins us to talk about the 70s, marriage, sailing, survival and more with host Miwa Messer. This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.                     New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app. Featured Books (Episode): A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst Adrift by Steven Callahan Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

Triple Click brings on Tom Bissell, writer of video games, books, TV shows and the final three episodes of Andor season 2. They talk about how he went from reporting in Iraq to writing dialogue for Battlefield, his journey to become a writer on Andor, and what it was like to pen the conclusion to one of the most acclaimed TV shows of all time.One More Thing:Kirk: James (Percival Everett)Maddy: Metroid: Zero MissionJason: Never Flinch (Stephen King)LINKS:“The Writer Will Do Something” by Matthew Seiji Burns and Tom Bissell: https://matthewseiji.itch.io/twwdsNicholas Quah on “The Death Star Trilogy”: https://www.vulture.com/article/andor-rogue-one-new-hope-star-wars-trilogy-viewing-order.htmlPaste Magazine interview with Tom about writing his Andor episodes: https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/andor/andor-season-2-finale-postmortem-with-writer-tom-bissellTom's Related Reading Recs: The House of Government by Yuri Slezkine, A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel, and anything by John Le CarréTriple Click LIVE in Portland, July 11: https://albertarosetheatre.com/event/triple-click-live/alberta-rose-theatre/portland-oregon/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden — winner of the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction — is an indelible debut novel about love, loss, war and want. Yael joins us to talk about writing historical fiction, creating messy characters, repression, home and family with host Miwa Messer. This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.                     New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app. Featured Books (Episode): The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden Fingersmith by Sarah Waters Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

In today's episode another trial that forms the basis for great drama: the case of Thomas More, tried and executed in 1535, events dramatised by Robert Bolt in A Man for All Seasons and Hilary Mantel in Wolf Hall. How did More try to argue that silence was no evidence of treason? Why was his defence so legalistic? Was he really ‘the Socrates of England'? And who was the true villain in this case: Thomas Cromwell, Richard Rich or the King himself? Available now on PPF+: Socrates part 2, in which David explores the verdict of history on this case and the fierce arguments it still inspires. Sign up now to get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Next time in Politics on Trial: Mary Queen of Scots vs the Secret State Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Preeti and Jenn recorded live with Patrons for a special retrospective, WoT readalikes, and Q&A!Read-Alikes:Dandelion Dynasty by Ken LiuBetween Earth and Sky series by Rebecca RoanhorseInheritance Trilogy by NK Jemisin (and then everything else)The Expanse series by James S.A. CoreyDead Djinn Universe series by P. Djeli ClarkBeverly Jenkins, Vivid (for Romanda)The Kushiel series (incl the Joscelin book) by Jacqueline CareyThe Thief / Megan Whalen Turner The Emily Wilde trilogy Babel by RF Kuang Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel anything Kit Rocha (Jenn loves Mercenary Librarians)It's Not Me, It's You by Stephanie Kate Strohm THE FLOATING WORLD by Axie OhDiviners by Libba BrayCirce by Madeline MillerHild / Menewood by Nicola GriffithPayal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot is out now!Merch:tar-valon-or-bust.printify.me/products and northingtron.redbubble.com [new designs available!] Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.Director Peter Kosminsky worked closely with late author Hilary Mantel to bring the story of Thomas Cromwell's rise and fall to the screen. Today, he shares his experience working with Hilary, filming on the same Hampton Court Palace flagstones where King Henry VIII once stood, and finally saying goodbye to Thomas Cromwell. 

A show about how Hilary Mantel's novels about Thomas Cromwell and their presentations by the BBC in the Wolf Hall series from 2015 and 2025 help to tell the story of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. A nice economic history lesson.

Last summer, when The New York Times Book Review released its list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, one of the authors with multiple titles on that list was Hilary Mantel, who died in 2022. Those novels were “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies,” the first two in a trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell, the all-purpose fixer and adviser to King Henry VIII.Those books were also adapted into a 2015 television series starring Mark Rylance as Cromwell and Damien Lewis as King Henry. It's now a decade later and the third book in Mantel's series, “The Mirror and the Light,” has also been adapted for the small screen. Its finale airs on Sunday, April 27.Joining host Gilbert Cruz on this week's episode is Mantel's former editor Nicholas Pearson. He describes what it was like to encounter those books for the first time, and to work with a great author on a groundbreaking masterpiece of historical fiction. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Mirror and the Light is the final book in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall Trilogy, showcasing the final years of Thomas Cromwell. Before you watch the newest season of the tv show, listen to Mantel talk about crafting her beloved series, her unique approach to historical fiction, planning the end of the trilogy and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over. We end this episode with TBR Top Off book recommendations from Marc and Donald.  This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.                      New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.  Featured Books (Episode): The Mirror and The Light by Hilary Mantel  Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel  Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel  A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel   Featured Books (TBR Top Off):   Firebrand by Elizabeth Fremantle  The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell 

Jane and Fi are back with their eighth book club, and this one's gone internationale - get the nibbles ready... Plus, Nicholas Pearson, Hilary Mantel's editor and publisher of 20 years, joins Jane and Fi to discuss her life and work. Thank you so much for your engagement and interaction. We hope you'll join us for the next one.Get your suggestions in at: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jane and Fi have something to get off their collective podcast breasts, and amid that, there's also chat about space travel, rumours of who will be the next Archbishop, advice on Mother's Day, and more twin towns. Please excuse the brief funny noise in this episode — the aliens have finally landed. Plus, broadcaster Sara Cox and her best friend Clare Hamilton discuss their podcast 'The Teencommandments'. The next book club episode is coming this Friday. The book is 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Accent alert in this podcast — proceed with caution! Jane and Fi chat saucy postcards, sex work, twin towns, and space nappies. Plus, actor Ruth Wilson discusses narrating the new audio books for the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy. The next book club episode is coming this Friday. The book is 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' by Hilary Mantel.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Lady has landed, and it's causing a stir... Jane and Fi also chat sufferable men, bonny babies, Lucozade, and 80085. Plus, Phyllida Lloyd — director of The Iron Lady, Mamma Mia!, and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical — joins them (with some minor tech issues). The next book club episode is coming this Friday. The book is 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is an encore release of an earlier podcast episode.WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Wolf Hall.We're pleased to bring you this special recap episode of Wolf Hall, the award-winning 2015 adaptation of Hilary Mantel's novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. This episode outlines major plot points, historical details, and character arcs, so if you're not caught up on Wolf Hall yet, all six episodes are available to watch on PBS Passport. Now let's travel back to England in the year 1529, right at the start of one of the most tempestuous times in English history.

Welcome to this unspecial email-only podcast episode — Jane and Fi chat Cockney frogs, twinned towns, and St. Patrick's Day. The next book club episode is coming this Friday. The book is 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Podcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to another Friday special. This week's bonus episode features an interview with The Times' Literary Editor, Laura Hackett, from our Times Radio afternoon show (2–4 pm, Monday to Thursday). Today, we're bringing you our weekly round-up of the best book releases with The Times literary team. Deputy Literary Editor at The Times and The Sunday Times, Laura Hackett, joins Jane and Fi to share her thoughts. The next book club pick has been announced! Eight Months on Ghazzah Street is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Book club is coming (finally), so prepare yourselves and get in touch! Jane and Fi chat bird song, burly beavers, sex workers, pets on zoom, divorce, a pig in a poke and Australia, amongst other things... Plus, broadcaster and journalist Emma Barnett discusses her latest book 'Maternity Service'. The next book club pick has been announced! 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you have been impacted by any of the dross discussed on Off Air, just contact an action line... This episode's dross includes turtle soup, the Adelphi, quilting, and harmony on the heath. Plus, campaigner, investor, and former Twitter board member Baroness Lane-Fox talks tech. The next book club pick has been announced! 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're all about minimum effort, maximum impact round here. Jane and Fi chat Pepper Pig, the gynaecology of hens and hairdresser etiquette. Plus, campaigner and mother of two autistic children Lisa Lloyd, discusses her book 'Raising the SEN-Betweeners'. The next book club pick has been announced! 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to this carefully curated episode. We begin with the admin section before moving on to toddler Crufts, ear health and pet anal glands... Enjoy! Plus, Fi speaks to actress Jodie Whittaker about her new show 'Toxic Town'. The next book club pick has been announced! 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' is by Hilary Mantel.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to another Friday special. This week's bonus episode features an interview from our Times Radio afternoon show (2–4 pm, Monday to Thursday). The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed tells the stories of five women deceived into relationships with undercover police officers. Fi speaks with Belinda Harvey, one of the women involved. The next book club pick has been announced! Eight Months on Ghazzah Street is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Hannah Quinn Podcast Producer: Eve Salusbury Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jane and Fi somehow manage to link the gendering of chickens to bedside chocolate bars... tune in to find out how. And Jane speaks to Sue Campbell, Former Director of Women's Football at the FA, about her memoir 'The Game Changer'. The next book club pick has been announced! 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Hannah Quinn Podcast Producer: Eve Salusbury Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode, Jane and Fi delve into whether it's acceptable to make use of someone else's Ring doorbell, the gynaecology of a hen, and Jane's robot companion, Craig. Additionally, Fi speaks with Lindsey Burrow, widow of rugby league legend Rob Burrow, about her heartfelt memoir 'Take Care'. The next book club pick has been announced! 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Hannah Quinn Podcast Producer: Eve Salusbury Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy flipping on this fine Shrove Tuesday! Today, Jane shares a memory of being left fully exposed on the loo at a National Trust property, while Fi recalls delivering a lesson on life at the Britannia swimming baths. Fi also speaks with actor Jared Harris about his role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's new production of Hamlet. The next book club pick has been announced! 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Hannah QuinnPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Global events can't be ignored, but there's still room for more vasectomy debate and the ladies ponder how Americans know the week has ended without a Sunday roast.Plus, Jane speaks to Esther Ghey about her new book 'Under A Pink Sky'.The next book club pick has been announced! 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' is by Hilary Mantel.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radioFollow us on Instagram! @janeandfiAssistant Producer: Hannah QuinnPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jane is angry at the world because it isn't her birthday... but it is Fi's. They talk more class nonsense, the etymology of "napkin" and Screwfix spam. Plus, Fi is speaks to actress Tuppence Middleton about her memoir 'Scorpions'. The next book club pick has been announced! 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: janeandfi@times.radio Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Hannah Quinn Podcast Producer: Eve Salusbury Executive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The screenwriter Peter Straughan has become adept at taking well known — and beloved — books and adapting them for the big and small screens. He was first nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay of the 2011 film “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” based on the classic John le Carré spy novel, and then adapted Hilary Mantel's “Wolf Hall” trilogy into an award-winning season of television, with an adaptation of the third novel coming out soon. Now he has been nominated for a second Oscar: for his screenplay for “Conclave,” based on Robert Harris's political thriller set in the secret world of a papal election.“It's almost like mosaic work,” Straughan tells Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, about adapting books. “You have all these pieces; sometimes they're going to be laid out in a very similar order to the book, sometimes a completely different order. Sometimes you're going to deconstruct and rebuild completely.”In the third episode of our special series devoted to Oscar-nominated films adapted from books, Cruz talks with Straughan about his process of translating a book to the screen, and about the moments in ‘‘Conclave” that he found most exciting to adapt.Produced by Tina Antolini and Alex BarronEdited by Wendy DorrEngineered by Daniel RamirezOriginal Music by Elisheba IttoopHosted by Gilbert Cruz Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In this episode, we get excited about two new books: The Power and the Glory: The Country House Before the Great War by Adrian Tinniswood and Playworld: A Novel by Adam Ross. Then Mel shares her reading and loving doorstopper novels of 500+ pages. Links The Power and the Glory: The Country House Before the Great War by Adrian Tinniswood The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House, 1918-1939 by Adrian Tinniswood Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the English Country House After World War II by Adrian Tinniswood Playworld: A Novel by Adam Ross Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross Adrian Tinniswood's website Podcast: History Extra — The Golden Age of the Country House The Wheel of Fortune by Susan Howatch Mel's Favorite Doorstopper Novels Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson REAMDE by Neal Stephenson The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili (translated by Ruth Martin & Charlotte Collins) Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth - reviewed on our Hollywood podcast Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel - reviewed on our London podcast The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - reviewed on our Library podcast The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - reviewed on our Cemetery podcast The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafón - reviewed on our Library podcast The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Fairy Tale by Stephen King Transcript of this episode. The Library of Lost Time is a Strong Sense of Place Production! https://strongsenseofplace.com Join our FREE Substack to get our (awesome) newsletter and join in chats with other people who love books and travel. Do you enjoy our show? Do you want to make friends with other (lovely) listeners? Please support our work on Patreon. Every little bit helps us keep the show going and makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside - https://www.patreon.com/strongsenseofplace As always, you can find us at: Our site Instagram Substack Patreon Parts of the Strong Sense of Place podcast are produced in udio! Some effects are provided by soundly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the ladies return on our new day, TUESDAYS, to discuss their favorite things right now amid the Los Angeles wildfires. The ladies discuss their favorite things for various categories, including books, TV shows, skin care, makeup, clothing, and more! Please find their recommendations below. With the L.A. wildfires still going on, we also want to take the time to spread the word and help those in need. We have linked a few Google Docs below containing links to various GoFundMes for families who need support after their homes were destroyed. If you are able, please consider donating. Thank you! Hosts: Juliet Litman and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jade Whaley LA WILDFIRE RELIEF Displaced Black Families GoFund Me Directory https://shorturl.at/FziM1 Additional Aid/Resource List https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1w7Rxmcw8naEqRXc6UoXCYSoR3_k-u8elafDk-GFteDY/htmlview?usp=gmail JULIET AND AMANDA'S FAVORITES LIST  BOOKS Juliet: Wolf Half by Hilary Mantel, Best Land Under Heaven by Michael Wallis  Amanda: The Talent by Daniel D'Addario, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner TV SHOWS Juliet: Day of the Jackal on Peacock  Amanda: Say Nothing on FX, Anora (a movie) SKINCARE/MAKEUP  Juliet: Youth To the People's Kale + Spinach Superfood Cleanser, Cerave Skin Renewing Night Cream  Amanda: Dennis Gross LED Mask, Merit Flush Blush, T3 Airebrush, Chanel Roussy lipstick from Marisa Meltzer's Soft Power substack CLOTHING Juliet: Uniqlo Waffle Long Sleeved  Amanda: J. Crew Cotton Poplin Pajamas INTERNET DISTRACTION  Juliet: Nordstrom's January Sale  Amanda: Kaitlin Phillips's Substack and Tina Brown's Substack CELEB PHOTO Juliet: Jamie Dornan  Amanda: The Graham Norton show INTERNET STORY Juliet: Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag getting her music to the top of the charts after losing their house  Amanda: The Timothee Chalamet experience Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

China's rapid surge in electric vehicle manufacturing, adoption, and export has variously encouraged, delighted, impressed, frightened, and even enraged people around the world. What did China get right in facilitating the explosive development in this industry? Was is just subsidies, or were there other important policies that helped jumpstart it? How have other geographies responded? And what can they learn? Ilaria Mazzocco, deputy director and senior fellow with the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) joins me to share her rich insights into the Chinese EV industry.3:49 – How Ilaria became interested in green industrial policy5:59 – The reality of progress in EVs in China 11:21 – The role of state subsidies and other things that tend to get missed in trying to understand EVs in China 16:51 – How other countries are trying to adopt China's approach 19:21 – The differences between the EU and U.S. approaches 24:17 – The outlook for competition in the Chinese market 26:08 – Business models in the Chinese EV sector and the example of BYD30:53 – Chinese firms' push for internationalization and how the rapidity of becoming multinationals [multinational companies?] may pose challenges 35:54 – Alignment between host countries and Chinese companies 39:58 – What the U.S. is doing and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)42:27 – How U.S. protectionist measures may affect third markets, and whether restrictions may backfire 48:57 – The coming shift to next-generation batteries, and the potential for international collaboration in advancing more circular practices 55:43 – How Ilaria's fieldwork shifted her perspective on the EV industry 59:38 – How we can improve industrial policy Recommendations:Ilaria: My Antonia by Willa Cather; the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel; The Army of Sleepwalkers by Wu Ming (an Italian novelist collective) about the French Revolution Kaiser: The Wolf Hall audiobooks read by Ben Miles; the HBO series Rome (2005-2007) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Wolf Hall.We're pleased to bring you this special recap episode of Wolf Hall, the award-winning 2015 adaptation of Hilary Mantel's novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. This episode outlines major plot points, historical details, and character arcs, so if you're not caught up on Wolf Hall yet, all six episodes are available to watch on PBS Passport. Now let's travel back to England in the year 1529, right at the start of one of the most tempestuous times in English history.