Podcasts about kindle unlimited

今回、7冊目となるKindle書籍『自分軸で生きる人の独立論: 辞めるか残るか、自分で決める力のつくり方』を出版しました！

This week from a galaxy far, far away with Jon Justice.Skeleton Crew Director Jon Watts to direct the first of 3 Simon Kinberg written SW triolgy films set after Ep 9!SUPPORT JON JUSTICE AND PICK UP YOUR COPY OF THE EMBARK, SPACE OPERA SERIESAn exciting mix of Fast and Furious, Star Wars, Ready Player One and the sci-fi adventures of the 70's - 2000'sEMBARK: Book 1 and EMBARK: Treasure in Darkness (Book 2) EMBARK: The Vanishing War (Book 3) Gahan Corbijn and the Asteroid of Misfortune, The Rocket Queen (Book 5) Fear the Dangerous Night (Book 6) are available now in ebook, paperback, audiobook and free on Kindle Unlimited!EMBARK Battle Planet (Book 7) is now available!https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K7LLFZYEmail: TalkShowNerd@gmail.com@X @JonJusticeInstagram TheJonJusticeFacebook Jon Justice

IntroductionWhat happens to your sense of self when the earthly roles you play, mother, professional, spouse, suddenly shift, fail, or disappear entirely? In this lesson, we will explore the liberating shift from asking "Who am I?" based on temporary labels, to discovering "Whose I am" in Christ.Here is what you will discover in this episode:Realize the danger of "pigeonholing" your self-worth into temporary earthly roles.Learn how life disruptions can reveal hidden "identity holes" and how to heal them.Understand your standing as an adopted child of God through key biblical scriptures.Shift your mindset from a lonely "it's just me" attitude to a confident "I belong to the Father" reality.My Story: A Wake-Up Call in a London ChurchRecently, I found myself wrestling with a deep, unsettling question: Who am I?It all started during a church service in London back in 2023. A new member was introduced who shared my last name and came from my home country. I felt a sudden rush of excitement thinking we might be related. But just as quickly, a painful thought hit me like a physical blow: How could you be related? You don't even know who your father is.Even though I was 63 years old and didn't "need" a father in my daily life, that moment revealed a massive, unhealed identity hole. It made me realize how easily our sense of self can shatter. We often build our entire identities on what we do or who we are related to. As the Scripture tells us:"For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." — Proverbs 23:7When our earthly connections or roles crack, our entire foundation can fall apart. Let's explore how we can build an identity that can never be shaken.Why Earthly Labels Place a Limit on Your PotentialWhen someone asks who you are, what is your go-to answer? Do you say, "I'm a mom," "I'm a writer," or "I'm a secretary"? While these roles are wonderful, tying your identity solely to them is incredibly limiting.If your identity is tied to your marriage, what happens if that marriage ends in divorce? If your identity is tied to your career, what happens if you lose your job? When I was laid off from my Wall Street job in the middle of a massive financial crisis in New York City, everyone expected me to panic. But I didn't. Why? Because my identity was never tied to my job title.When we define ourselves strictly by our circumstances, we easily fall into a lonely, defensive mindset of "me, myself, and I." We start asking ourselves fearful questions like: If I don't earn this money, who will? Who will help me make these hard decisions? Who takes care of me when I'm exhausted?By framing our life as "it's just me against the world," we limit our options and block ourselves from receiving divine help.Finding My Identity in ChristThe real game-changer in my life was shifting my devotion from my temporary labels to Christ. That is where we answer the deeper question: Whose am I?Here are the powerful truths that define who you are in His eyes:"But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God." — John 1:12"See how very much our father loves us for he calls us his children and that is what we are." — 1 John 3:1"For all who are led by the spirit of God are children of God. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you receive God's spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him Abba father." — Romans 8:14-15When my husband left me to raise our two- and four-year-old sons on my own, I had to learn how to rely on God as a literal partner. I co-parented with Him. He gave me wisdom for hard decisions, provided rent when money was tight, and filled my home with peace. Because I understood whose I was, I knew I was never truly alone.Think of it this way: If your own child is thirsty, they don't knock hesitantly on your door; they burst right in because they belong to you. You are their parent, and you naturally care for them first. God does the same for us as His children. As He promises us:"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." — Matthew 6:33Summary[00:00 - 01:15] Introduction: Challenging you to look past your daily roles and ask: Whose are you?[01:16 - 03:30] The London Incident: How a simple introduction in a church pew exposed a 63-year-old "identity hole" left by an absent father.[03:31 - 05:45] The Trap of Earthly Labels: Why calling yourself "just a mom" or "just an employee" keeps you stuck in a lonely, fearful "it's just me" mindset.[05:46 - 08:30] Surviving Life's Crises: Why my Wall Street layoff didn't break me, and how you can protect your peace when roles shift.[08:31 - 11:30] Finding Identity in Christ: Grounding ourselves in Scripture to realize we are adopted, cherished children of God.[11:31 - 14:00] Bold Access to the Father: The child-and-parent analogy, and why God's children get to step to the front of the line for His love and provision.[14:01 - End] Journal Reflections & Next Steps: Practical journal prompts to help you apply these lessons in your daily life.Your Self-Reflection Journal Challenge Grab a notebook and write down these three prompts to discover your true identity:I have been identifying myself as ______.Because I belong to Christ, I can begin to see myself as ______.One need I can bring to God and one step I can take is ______.Call to Action & ResourcesIf you're a single mom struggling with loneliness, fear, or grief, grab a copy of my 21-day Christian devotional, "Courage to Believe." It is designed to help you bring your hopes and fears to God so you can take your next steps with courage. It's available on Amazon in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese, and is free to read on Kindle Unlimited! Learn more here: https://link.amazon/B0bdk17QjI love hearing from my listeners all over the world! Drop me a line at https://www.jrosemarie.com/contact and let me know how you are answering these identity questions today.You are loved, you are seen, and you are never alone.Follow me on: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/solomomstalkhttps://solomomstalk.mysites.io/podcast-2-copy/shattered-foundations-rebuilding-your-true-identity-as-a-daughter-of-godThis podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy

A little over 2 years have passed, and author Carolina Cardona returns to the podcast. It doesn't feel that long, as its been a pleasure seeing what Carolina had been doing since we last talked. We get to catch up and talk about what the past 2 years have looked like for Carolina. From her novel, Andujar: The Robot Gentleman of San Juan being translated into Spanish, as well as being taught as part of the curriculum in a course at the University of Puerto Rico. Imagine my surprise when the person who loves robots drops a bombshell that she was working on a novel set in the 14th century involving plague doctors and a 9 year old nun. Carolina and I talk about "The Plague Doctor & The Littlest Sister", which was released online and available for free via HoneyFeed (link below!). We talk about the novel that she calls a cozy fantasy during the time of the Black Death, and what you can find with 3 plague doctors, the 9 year old nun, a disgraced Templar Knight, and the mysteries happening around them. We then wrap up by talking about what she's working on for the future, what you can expect, and so much more! You can read The Plague Doctor & The Littlest Sister here: https://www.honeyfeed.fm/novels/33517 You can find Andújar: The Robot Gentleman of San Juan at Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, Barnes and Noble, and Ingram Spark. https://amzn.to/4aTlhUq You can find Carolina at: https://www.carolinacardona.com/ https://www.instagram.com/thetropicaleccentric/ https://www.threads.net/@thetropicaleccentric You can listen to Carolina's first episode here:  https://talesfromthefandom.libsyn.com/episode-364-carolina-cardona-aka-thetropicaleccentric-talks-anime-japan-and-her-work-as-an-author

She Wrote 96 Books BEFORE AI. Now She Built an AI Publishing Machine | Coral HartShe wrote 96 books before ever touching AI.Now Coral Hart is building an AI-powered publishing ecosystem designed to help authors research what readers actually want, develop books faster, edit them, market them, and manage the business behind publishing.On this episode of Diversified Game, Kellen Coleman sits down with Coral Hart, CEO and founder of the Coral Hart Group and Plot Pros, to talk about what AI is really doing to publishing.Coral has spent 16 years working across traditional publishing, independent publishing, hybrid publishing, editing, ghostwriting, and bestselling authorship. She says she has also ghostwritten more than 200 novels.We get into:• Why Coral wrote 96 books BEFORE using AI• Why AI does not automatically make someone a good writer• How she uses live reader and market data to identify demand• Tropesmith and tracking what readers are talking about across platforms• Why she believes the first draft does not have to be perfect• How AI has changed the game for neurodivergent creators• Why publishing has historically been gatekept• AI books versus “AI slop”• Why readers, not technology, ultimately decide what survives• Kindle Unlimited and how authors actually get paid• Why one bestseller will probably NOT make you rich• Why Coral did not break even until her seventh published book• Building a publishing business instead of simply writing a book• Creating systems that continue marketing and operating while you sleep• Growing a business from South Africa while serving a global audience• The real workload behind becoming a six-figure author• Coral's experience researching the Cape Flats for 28 Boys• Giving back through literacy, libraries, and author education• What the future of books could look like as AI becomes normalCoral makes one point especially clear: AI is leverage, but there is still no substitute for understanding your craft, your customer, and the business.GUEST:Coral Harthttps://coralhart.com/Explore Coral's publishing tools, education, classes, and free resources directly through her website.DIVERSIFIED GAME:Diversified Game brings you entrepreneurs, investors, creators, executives, and unconventional thinkers from around the world to explain how they started, sustained, and succeeded.Website:http://diversifiedgame.com/SUBSCRIBE:https://www.youtube.com/@DiversifiedGamePodcast/?sub_confirmation=1SUPPORT THE SHOW:https://www.patreon.com/profile?u=15553364CONNECT:Facebook:https://web.facebook.com/GAMEDIVERSIFIED/X:https://x.com/gamediversifiedLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/gamediversifiedBUSINESS INQUIRIES:KELLEN@COLEMANPRFIRM.COMRELATED SEARCHES:Coral Hart interviewCoral Hart AIAI publishingAI book writingAI for authorsPlot ProsTropesmithself publishing businesshow authors make moneyfuture of publishingAI writing toolsKindle Unlimitedindependent publishingpublishing with AIAI entrepreneurshipSouth African entrepreneursDiversified Game PodcastKellen Coleman#CoralHart #ArtificialIntelligence #AIPublishing #Publishing #Authors #SelfPublishing #Entrepreneurship #AI #Writing #BookPublishing #DiversifiedGame #KellenColemanDGP&x%

As they say on the Discord, this year's theme is…Themes! This week, we're talking about hammers, nails, drills, pipes and more — literal characters who are wielding literal (and metaphorical) tools! We're hopping in the wayback machine to talk about books from the 00s and early 10s, on a continuum of content from “oh this has a whole plot” to “here's a great one-handed read.” We've got plumbers, blacksmiths, contractors and a sentient screwdriver…there is literally something here for everyone.If you'd like to come over and talk about romances, with or without tools (jk, they all have tools), please join us on the Fated Mates Discord, where you'll find a few thousand other listeners who love talking about these books we love. You also get one extra episode a month from us!Fated States, our democratic phonebanking initiative begins this week! We'll be calling Texas to get out the vote for James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa! There will be games, prizes and special guests! Learn more and register to phone bank with us at fatedmates.net/fatedstates.BooksRoller Girl by Vanessa North The Scoundrel Falls Hard by Sophie JordanUnder Construction by Kate ColeLaying Pipe by Kiki ClarkThe Carpenter by Ramona GrayEntwined by Kristen CallihanCaulky by KM Neuhold Hard Time by Cara McKennaKate's Crew by Jane RylonLaid by Brill HarperScrewed by CD ReissNotesThis Saturday, we're calling Texas to get out the vote for James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa at 1pm eastern time! Learn more and register to phone bank with us at fatedmates.net/fatedstates.Some books about unions and unionizing: Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao, and the 1984 Harlequin American Romance was The Third Time by Rebecca Flanders. Our listener Sylvia suggested two others: Don't Forget to Smile by Katherine Gillis Seidel and Here Be Dragons by Jenny Redford. These titles are also in the photo array above!We did have an episode about renovation romance with Nikki Payne back in season 6 and one on quick and dirty reads back in season 2.Unfortunately, it seems Entwined by Kristen Callihan is no longer available for sale. Sorry, everyone!Samhain and Elora's Cave were two early erotic romance publishers that closed and we've lost a lot of information about these publishers and their backlist of titles and authors.SponsorsLucy Score, author of The Dead Guy Next Door, the first in the Riley Thorn series, available in print, ebook and audiobook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.HarperCollins, publisher of A.T. Qureshi's Rider of Dragons, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.MJ Hastings's Firstborn, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.LJ Andrews, author of The Stolen Crown preorder now in print, ebook or audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/9/21/s0903-carpenters-plumbers-and-other-metaphorical-romance-jobs If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now. 00:00 Bantr07:25 People with Tools15:47 AD: THE STOLEN CROWN17:30 Organizing Principles20:44 Roller Girl27:38 The Scoundrel Falls Hard32:05 AD: FIRST BORN33:58 Under Construction48:14 AD: RIDER OF DRAGONS49:49 The Carpenter55:43 Entwined1:01:51 AD: THE DEAD GUY NEXT DOOR1:03:58 Caulky1:12:12 Hard Time1:19:47 Kate's Crew1:27:17 Blue Collar Bad Boys1:34:23 Screwed1:42:11 Wrapping Up

SummaryWhen we neglect our own mental, spiritual, and physical health to take care of everyone else, the trauma we ignore doesn't disappear. It piles up like a heap of debris, blocking our natural life flow. In this episode, you will explore a deeply personal journey of healing, learn how to unpack decades of hidden wounds, and discover how to construct your own multi-dimensional healing toolkit.“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”~ Matthew 11:28 (NIV).This episode will help you:Identify the physical and mental signs of living in chronic survival mode.Understand the concept of multi-dimensional, layered healing.Learn how to utilize free community and workplace resources for mental health support.Build a personalized healing toolkit using practical daily exercises.Key Takeaways:Recognize the Signs of Survival Mode: Chronic worry, physical exhaustion, and feeling like survival is your only setting are clear indicators that your body and mind are crying out for care.Start with Simple Movement: When structured plans feel overwhelming, take the easiest step first. Walking outdoors can act as a catalyst for both mental clarity and spiritual peace.Build a Layered Toolkit: A robust recovery plan uses multiple resources—such as journaling, reading self-development material, prayer, therapy, and community support.Utilize Workplace & Community Programs: Don't let finances halt your healing. Look into employer-sponsored Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) or local sliding-scale non-profit counseling services.Extend Grace to Yourself: Healing takes time. Be patient with your progress and seek out safe, trustworthy confidants who can listen without judgment.Resources:From the Blog: https://jrosemarie.com/connect-with-nature-for-better-mental-health/Courage to Believe 21 Day Christian Devotional for Single Moms. Ebook available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German on Amazon: https://link.amazon/B0bKY9jS0Also free with Kindle Unlimited: https://link.amazon/A0hRTZlVwConnect with me/request your free study guide: https://www.jrosemarie.com/contactExplore more resources: https://solomomstalk.store/b/giveawayDisclosure: as an Amazon Associates, I may earn a small commission when you purchase an affiliate link on this post. There is no additional cost to you.https://solomomstalk.mysites.io/podcast-2-copy/god-my-healer-facing-the-wounds-i-learned-to-hideThis podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy

App Assistente de Estudos em TCC:https://essencialdatcc.com.br/cbt-essential-study-appCurso Definitivo de TCC:www.essencialdatcc.com.brBaixe, GRATUITAMENTE, materiais para uso clínico: hhttps://essencialdatcc.com.br/materiais-gratuitos-tcc/Teste Grátis por 30 dias o Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3idHGzy - Tenha acesso à Mais de um milhão de eBooks para você ler onde e quando quiser. Incluindo o MEU! :) Teste Grátis por 30 dias o Amazon prime: https://amzn.to/3cM7fXf - Tenha frete grátis e acesso ao Prime Vídeo

Writer Fran Wilson's debut publication 'Facing the Music' captures a lifelong love of experiencing music both from a performer and an audience member's perspective. Buy the book in bookshops, Amazon and on Kindle Unlimited.

Ashli O'Connell is the author of the historical novel Emmaline. As a debut author, she earned five figures of royalties in ten weeks— all without having her book in Kindle Unlimited. Ashli joins us to share insights into her author debut and lessons learned from her successful book launch.//Draft2Digital is where you grow your Indie Author Career// Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way.• Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

In Part 6 of The Negative Image series, Pastor Ryan and Sarah unpack Islamic prophecies regarding the Muslim Mahdi and examine how they intersect with biblical end-times prophecy. This episode focuses on Checkbox 14, which highlights the ancient Islamic prophecy recorded in texts like al-Mahdi, predicting that a "star with a luminous tail" (a comet) would rise in the eastern sky prior to the emergence of the Mahdi.The hosts discuss the fulfillment of this sign through Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (Su Chin Shan) in October 2024, including its observation at sunrise in the eastern sky over Egypt by renowned astrophotographer Osama Fathi, just months before Our Guy's emergence in Mecca on February 3, 2025. The episode also recaps Checkbox 13 (the 2024 Ramadan double eclipse), addresses the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and Al-Qaeda's Al-Aqsa fatwa, explores AI in relation to the Image of the Beast in Revelation 13, and refutes pre-tribulation rapture misconceptions.Books: These Final Days (Parts 1, 2, and 3) by Pastor Ryan (Available on Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible).Website & Checkbox Chart: thesefinaldays.orgCONNECT WITH THESE FINAL DAYSWebsite: thesefinaldays.orgSubscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheseFinalDaysTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thesefinaldaysFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesefinaldays X: https://x.com/TheseFinalDays

Authors on KDP Select get access to $700 million a year in the Kindle Unlimited fund. One login, one dashboard, one algorithm, one company to deal with.But that same company won't let you talk to a human with authority when something goes wrong, and it runs an algorithm that can end your career without telling you why.So which is it? More money, or more freedom?In this week's episode, you'll hear from Kris Austin, CEO and co-founder of Draft2Digital, to figure out the real answer, and it isn't the same for every author.Here's what you'll learn:Why the "safe" choice on Amazon can turn into the riskiest How Draft2Digital can simplify every aspect of going wideA little-known change that lets KU authors do something that was off-limits until recentlyListen in or read the blog version to find out which path is best for you and your book.YT Link: https://youtu.be/cPyv2iIztwoSupport the show

Welcome back to Solo Mom's Talk. Today, we are beginning a new series: Navigating the Emptiness.For those of us who have spent decades or more mothering solo, this transition hits with a force you never expected. I remember a moment after my children had grown when I was traveling to recalibrate my life. I was at Whole Foods, and as I picked up a juicy organic plum, I felt a literal stabbing in my heart. It was a wave of guilt so intense I had to stop and ask myself why. I realized that after years of pouring everything into my children, I didn't believe I deserved my own happiness or even a simple piece of fruit.This "guilt of the organic plum" is a signal that a massive life era is ending. Acknowledging these complex, messy emotions is a strategic necessity for your next chapter. This transition is far more than a "sad phase"; it is a critical psychological recalibration. For twenty years, your identity has been fused with your children's survival. Now, as the silence of the house grows, you must move from looking outward at their needs to looking inward at your own. This pivot point is the difference between fading into the background and embarking on a powerful, purposeful next phase.To help you navigate this transition, let's explore the strategic milestones and takeaways for reclaiming your individual identity.Key Takeaways & Timestamps02:15 - Give Yourself Permission to Grieve (But Not Too Long): Grief isn't just for the loss of a person; it's for the loss of a life-era. It is okay to be sad and recognize the reality that you are alone now. However, the strategy here is to grieve with intention. Start by asking yourself exactly which part of solo mothering you are having the most difficulty letting go. Face the end of the era, sit in the quiet for a minute, and then prepare to move forward.05:30 - Shifting from Caregiver to Mentor: Your role as a mother isn't ending; it is evolving from daily "carer" to lifelong mentor and coach. Embracing this change is the absolute secret to a successful relationship with your adult children. They may not need you to manage their laundry or carpools, but they will seek you out as a sounding board. For a deeper dive into this shift, I encourage you to listen to Episode 36, Season 8: Secrets to Communicating with Your Adult Children.09:00 - The "Who Am I?" Audit: During the throes of single motherhood, we often tell ourselves we don't have the time or resources for our own desires. Now is the time for a deep internal audit. To jumpstart this, I used a practical tool: I bought a Red Notebook. This color was significant to me, and inside, I listed every woman I wanted to stay connected with. This simple act of writing helped me focus on building a community of women worldwide. Reclaiming yourself starts with these small, intentional connections outside of your children.15:45 - Building a Living Legacy: Your independence is a blueprint for the next generation. Consider my mother, who in her 80s prioritized the gym and healthy eating to manage her high blood pressure. Her example stuck with me more than any words could. When I travel now, I'm showing my granddaughters that they don't have to stay in one place. They can live anywhere and be anyone. Self-care and goal-setting aren't selfish; they widen your children's perspectives on what is possible for their own lives.Capturing these realizations in writing is the bridge between a vague feeling and a concrete future.The Solo Mom's Self-Discovery ChecklistJournaling is a strategic tool for "writing the vision and making it plain," as we are instructed in Habakkuk 2:2. In this season of life, your "lizard brain" will often attempt to sabotage your progress with whispers of guilt or fear. By documenting your answers to deep questions, you bypass these internal mental blocks. You transition from a reactive state, handling the emergencies of others, to a proactive state where you are the architect of your own happiness.Self-Discovery Questions:[ ] What do I actually enjoy doing for myself when no one is watching?[ ] What specific goals or hobbies have I been putting off for the last 20 years?[ ] What parts of my personality disappeared while I was raising my children?[ ] What have I always wanted to learn, try, or experience (e.g., travel, school, business)?[ ] Who am I when I'm not organizing my life around my children's needs?[ ] What relationships with other women do I want to nurture now?[ ] What is it that I want for myself as an individual woman?As you begin to fill your own "Red Notebook" with these answers, remember that you don't have to find all the answers at once.Resource Spotlight & Call to ActionThe path forward often feels unclear, which is why seeking external guidance, both spiritual and professional, is a strategic move. For years, you co-parented with God through the struggles of solo motherhood. This new season is an invitation to walk with God in a new way. Relying on faith provides the strength to move forward even when the entire path isn't visible. This continuity of faith ensures that the same spiritual tools that helped you survive will now help you thrive.The Book: Courage to Believe: 21-Day Christian Devotional for Single Moms. This devotional helps you connect your messy emotions with the everlasting story of grace. It is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese.Special Offer: Every purchase of Courage to Believe includes a free companion workbook with proof of purchase to help you dig deeper into your recalibration.Connect: If you are navigating this transition and need a space to share your thoughts, or if you'd like to request a conversation, use the contact link: https://www.jrosemarie.com/contactYour role as a mother is permanent, but your life as an individual is being reborn. It's time to start doing the things you've been putting off.This podcast is not sponsored. However, some links in this post are affiliate links. If you make a purchase using a link, I may earn a small commission with no extra cost to you.https://solomomstalk.mysites.io/podcast-2-copy/navigating-the-emptiness-real-life-tips-for-empty-nest-solo-momsThis podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy

Today I am joined by Chassity Evans! Chassity is a longtime lifestyle creative known for her warm, detail-rich storytelling and her joyful approach to life. A lifelong romance reader, she loves a perfectly satisfying happily ever after.After years of sharing books, travel, and the beauty of everyday life with readers, Chassity now brings that same eye for atmosphere and emotional texture to her fiction.She splits her time between Charleston, South Carolina, and Harbour Island in The Bahamas with her husband and two kids. She loves lattes, singing in the car, and long Friday lunches with girlfriends.In this episode Chassity and I talk about her content creation journey, why she decided to write Pink Sand Summer, self-publishing, Kindle Unlimited, hiring an editor, her next book, and so much more!Chassity's WebsiteChassity's InstagramChassity's Substack Buy Pink Sand Summer I'd like to thank this month's sponsor, Alexandra Kaval, owner of Grace Space Christian Coaching! Apply to work together through a clarity callGrowth Without Burnout Signature 1:1 ProgramFlourish Group Coaching ProgramInstant access to the How to Seek Your Next Right Step from God guide through joining our email listPodcast GSCC YouTubeGSCC Instagram

Pellerin Books founders Laura Palmer and Jessie Sullivan on how readers discover books now, where to put your marketing money, and why the quality of the book still decides everything.You'll learnThe rule that quietly decides which authors get a publisher's time, budget and attention.Why the first question about marketing a book is never “how?”How to research your readers and your market without paying for a single tool.The metric that makes an ad campaign look like it is working when nothing is.What a cover and a developmental edit should cost, and the one place never to skimp.Why raising your ad budget too fast makes it perform worse, not better.How subscription reading changed what a sagging middle chapter costs a writer.Whether a publisher actually cares how many followers you have.Three books on writing that between them cover almost everything, and the two-word rule that keeps readers turning pages.Why you cannot keyword your way into a reader's life in the age of AI search.Resources & Links

Nine seasons of talking about romance, and no signs of quitting! We're starting a new season, full of much of our same old nonsense, now with more nonsense, because who needs tropes when you can talk about microtropes! Today, in honor of Season Nine, we're talking about Cloud Nine — both the WNBA star and the feeling you get when you fall in love. We've got a whole lot of books featuring romance in the sky — pilots, astronauts, plane crashes, astronauts and mile-high-clubs…and all of them featuring romance that won't quit.If you'd like to come over and talk about romances, both in the sky and on land, please join us on the Fated Mates Discord, where you'll find a few thousand other listeners who love talking about these books we love. You also get one extra episode a month from us!Fated States, our democratic phonebanking initiative begins next week. Learn more and register to phone bank with us at fatedmates.net/fatedstates.BooksThe Vegas Top Gun Series by Katie PorterOn Broken Wings by Chanel CleetonWild Card by Elsie SilverBeyond the Limits by Katherine GarberaThe Last Man on Earth by Shae SandersPuck Me Secretly by Odette StoneCrash Landing by Annie McQuaidPregnant in the Italian's PalazzoTurbulence by Whitney G.The Skyland Series by Kennedy RyanThe Professional by Kresley ColeNotesFated States is back! We'll be phonebanking every weekend on Saturdays starting September 19th, but the final weekend before the election, we'll instead phonebank on Sunday Nov 1 to avoid Halloween.The way to find a book club is to read River Town by Peter Hessler and then go to your nearest local indie bookstore and let the bookclub reveal itself to you.Find out more about The Sunday Letter Project.Pilots have been hot since Top Gun, and not just because of the volleyball scene.Natasha Cloud is a baddie and she gave an irrelevant man the business for being transphobic, and Jen thinks she's a literal hero.The Spanish Space Program, the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial was created in the 1940s and was replaced by the Agencia Espacial Española in 2021. According to Wikipedia, as of 2026, there have been Four Spanish astronauts.SponsorsHarpercollins, publishers of AT Qureshi's Rider of Dragons, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.Rose Prendeville, author of The Unknown Birds, available in print, ebook or audiobook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or with your monthly subscription to Kobo Plus. Use the code FATEDBIRDS at Rose's website to get a signed print book and 30% off!Isabel Sterling, author of With All My Haunted Heart, available in print, ebook or audiobook, from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local bookstore.Orbit Books, publishers of Louisa Carmody's The Shadows that Listen, available in print, ebook or audiobook at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, your local bookstore, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.Blue Box Press, publishers of Ashley Eckstein & Samantha Chase's Lucky 22 and David Eckstein's Just Enough, available in print, ebook or audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/9/6/s0901-cloud-nine-romance-in-the-sky If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some...

1. Finding Your Strength: An Invitation to LeadHey mama, I know exactly what it feels like when you're barely keeping your head above water. I've been where you are. There were days when raising my two youngest sons who were just two and four years old when their father walked out felt like an impossible weight. In those moments, "thriving" isn't even on the radar; you're just trying to survive the next hour. But I want to share a truth that changed everything for me: to see our families truly flourish, we have to move from "getting by" to a mindset of parenting as leadership.In my own journey, this shift happened when I stopped trying to carry the burden of being a solo mom on my own shoulders. I realized that I didn't have to parent from a place of depletion, but could begin parenting from a position of power. This isn't a power we muster up ourselves; it's a power that comes from a radical realization I had while my boys were small: I wasn't actually alone. I was co-parenting with God. When we move from the struggle of isolation into a divine partnership, our entire parenting landscape changes.2. The Radical Shift: Co-Parenting with God [02:15]Viewing God as your co-parent is the foundational step for any mother seeking to lead her household with confidence. When my husband left, I hit rock bottom. I felt like I couldn't even parent myself, let alone two babies, and there were moments I wanted to end it all. But then my mind shifted. I realized that if God cared for me, He cared for the children He gifted me.By making God your primary confidant, you protect yourself from the judgment of others. I learned early on that some people are only waiting for you to tell them your problems so they can use them against you. Confiding in God instead reduces that crushing burden of decision-making and keeps your heart safe.My journey from Atlanta to New York is a perfect example of this partnership. I had my mind set on going to Florida. But I had asked for God's help, and He led me to New York. Even when it felt like the craziest idea ever, I followed His lead because I knew He had the answers I didn't. This partnership allows you to:Navigate Financial Uncertainty: Turning to Him when the numbers don't add up.Receive Decisive Guidance: Seeking wisdom for your children's future.Find Emotional Safety: Knowing you have a partner who never leaves.Before we can effectively lead our children, we must first allow ourselves to be led.3. The Oxygen Mask: Letting God Parent You [06:40]You know the airplane instruction: put on your own oxygen mask first. In parenting, this is a strategic necessity. If we don't address our own internal wounds, anger at the ex, impatience, or the deep insecurity that abandonment leaves us with, we can't lead our children well.I had to learn to let God parent me. I didn't know my earthly father, but I discovered through the Word that God is an all-powerful, loving Father. Adopting Him as your own Father provides the emotional security you need to handle conflict and life's challenges. As Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us, when we trust Him with all our heart and stop depending on our own limited understanding, He shows us exactly which path to take. When we ask Him to help us with our fear or frustration, that internal healing becomes visible to our children. They see us being led, and it teaches them how to follow.4. Leadership Through Demonstration & The Power of Apology [10:45]True leadership in the home is demonstrative. Our children internalize our reactions more than our instructions. We have to move away from that old "boss" mentality where the parent is always right just because they're in charge. Instead, we lead by example.One of the most powerful tools you have is a sincere apology. I grew up in a culture where parents never apologized, but I'm telling you, it builds respect. If you lose your temper and start cussing or carrying on because someone made you mad, apologize to your child. Say, "I'm sorry I acted that way; I let my emotions control me." That's a seed of accountability. You're teaching them how to handle their own future mistakes.Leadership in Action:Money Management: I have to be honest, I've struggled with a "scarcity mindset" myself, where you get money and feel you need to spend it immediately. My guest, Al Jones, saw this in his own mother. Leading means breaking those cycles of poor credit and impulsive spending.Health Habits: Modeling how we value our bodies through exercise and nutrition.Respect for Others: Refusing to gossip or speak ill of the children's father in their presence.Emotional Regulation: Showing them how to respond to hardship without losing control.5. Rewriting the Legacy: Breaking Generational Cycles [14:50]As the leader of your home, you have the power to recalibrate your family legacy. It's about rejecting the idea that "this is just in my DNA." My family had a legacy of high blood pressure and young people dying of aneurysms. But 40 years ago, my mother who is now 91, decided to focus on her health. She changed the trajectory. I think about Patti LaBelle, who saw the women in her family dying of cancer and decided she wasn't going to "buy into" that legacy.You can alter your bloodline. I see it in my sons. My oldest maintained celibacy until he was married at 38, and my younger sons have made intentional choices about their own health and lives. Legacy isn't one dramatic declaration; it's repeated behavior.The Legacy AuditAsk yourself these questions to see what needs to change:How does our family handle money?How do we resolve conflict? (Is it yelling, or prayer and apology?)How do we talk about people when they aren't around?Do we keep our word?How do we treat our bodies?Remember: some things can stop with you, and some things can start with you.6. The Ministry of Imperfection [20:00]Sustainable leadership means releasing the perfectionism trap. You aren't "screwing up your kids" because you aren't perfect. When we realize that children are a reward and a gift from the Lord (Psalm 127:3), we can finally relax. Your home is your primary ministry.You don't have to be perfect; you just have to be present and willing to let God work in your life right in front of them. Let them see you pray, let them see you learn, and let them see you change course. As Isaiah 41:10 promises, you don't have to fear or be dismayed, because God is with you, strengthening you and upholding you with His hand.7. Episode Summary & Scripture Reference TableScriptures for the Solo Mom's JourneyJames 1:5 - Seeking wisdom for parenting decisions from a God who gives generously without fear of rebuke.If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. (NIV).Proverbs 3:5-6 - Relying on divine guidance instead of personal understanding to find the right path for your family.Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take (NLT).Proverbs 22:6 - Investing in your child's future by training them through demonstrative leadership.Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it (WEB).Psalm 127:3 - Reframing children as a gift and a reward to lower parental anxiety and perfectionism.Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him (NLT).Isaiah 41:10 - Finding the strength to lead by resting in the promise that God is upholding you.So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand (NIV).In this episode, we explore how a solo mom can transition from survival mode to parenting as leadership. By embracing the radical concept of co-parenting with God, mothers can alleviate the burden of decision-making and begin rewriting their generational legacy. Learn why demonstrative leadership and the power of apology are more effective than a "boss" mentality in shaping a child's character and breaking the cycle of scarcity.8. Call to Action (CTA)I invite you to take this journey further. If you need a daily reminder that you aren't walking this path alone, please check out my 21-day Christian devotional, Courage to Believe. It's available on Amazon and is translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian (and it's free on Kindle Unlimited!). **Amazon affiliate links when you purchase I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.I'd also love to connect with you. Follow me on Instagram @solomomstalk or subscribe to the SoloMoms Talk Podcast...

App Assistente de Estudos em TCC:https://essencialdatcc.com.br/cbt-essential-study-appCurso Definitivo de TCC:www.essencialdatcc.com.brBaixe, GRATUITAMENTE, materiais para uso clínico: hhttps://essencialdatcc.com.br/materiais-gratuitos-tcc/Teste Grátis por 30 dias o Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3idHGzy - Tenha acesso à Mais de um milhão de eBooks para você ler onde e quando quiser. Incluindo o MEU! :) Teste Grátis por 30 dias o Amazon prime: https://amzn.to/3cM7fXf - Tenha frete grátis e acesso ao Prime Vídeo

What happens when a group of working authors sits down after a rough month and tells the truth about publishing? You get this episode of Write Wrong Repeat. In this conversation, JP Rindfleisch IX, Holly Lyne, Jeff Elkins, Tom Holbrook, and Crys Cain check in on their writing lives, business experiments, marketing wins, publishing frustrations, and the strange emotional math of trying to build an author career in public. August was not an easy month. The group talks honestly about grief, health scares, family chaos, ADHD, burnout, stalled goals, tight finances, pre-order jail, and the pressure to keep producing when life refuses to cooperate. But this is not just a "publishing is hard" episode. It is also full of practical author-business conversation. The group gets into translations, BookFunnel, mailing lists, Facebook ads, TikTok, direct sales, Kindle Unlimited, pen names, book events, reader connection, writing to market, paranormal detective fiction, cozy mystery, sports romance, and what happens when your book accidentally shares a title with James Patterson. They also wrestle with a bigger question: What is still giving you hope about publishing? The answers are messy, funny, honest, and surprisingly encouraging. The group talks about how old strategies do not necessarily die just because new tools arrive, why reader connection still matters, how community can keep authors moving, and why there are still more paths than ever for writers who are willing to experiment, simplify, adjust, and keep going. This episode is for authors who are juggling too many projects, wondering what marketing tools are worth their time, trying to decide between KU and direct sales, struggling to write through a hard season, or asking whether publishing is still a place where real writers can build something meaningful. Listen in for a candid, funny, behind-the-scenes look at the author life as it actually happens. Imperfect progress, weird experiments, failed plans, small wins, big pivots, and enough hope to keep writing. Timecodes: 0:00 – Welcome to Write Wrong Repeat Episode 5 0:55 – Chris on why August is always chaos 1:50 – Translations doubled Chris's income 4:15 – BookShift, translation tools, and foreign-language mailing lists 8:50 – Tom on translations, grief, cozy projects, TikTok, and ads 12:50 – Facebook ads, scaling slowly, and building profitable momentum 17:50 – Holly's August: health scare, Amazon cliff, NetGalley, and TikTok dips 23:05 – Jeff's update: the conference, Mojo and Mayhem, and TikTok experiments 30:15 – Writing to market with supernatural detective fiction 39:00 – Paranormal cozy vs. urban fantasy detective: where does the book fit? 41:45 – Kindle Unlimited, wide publishing, direct sales, and reader behavior 52:00 – JP's update: ADHD, art projects, TikTok Lives, direct sales, street teams, and simplifying the business 1:05:15 – Preorder jail, KDP changes, and the search for publishing hope 1:07:25 – What gives authors hope right now: TikTok, KU, direct sales, translations, audio, and reader connection 1:12:05 – More niches, more tools, and why old publishing strategies still work

This month, the GenX Book Club heads back to New York City in 1977, a city of punk rock, poetry, underground art, the blackout, Son of Sam, and a little club on the Bowery called CBGB. Paul Stroessner Jr. and Suzanne Mattaboni are joined by author Gabriel Rotello to discuss his novel The CBGB Conspiracy, a historical murder mystery that mixes fictional characters with real people, places, and events from one of the wildest and most creative periods in New York City history. Gabriel didn't just research this world. He lived in it. He arrived in New York in the 1970s, played music during the early CBGB era, and later became a journalist, activist, author, and documentary filmmaker. The conversation quickly moves beyond the mystery itself and into the New York that inspired it. Gabriel shares memories of the downtown music and art scene, the real history woven throughout the novel, the Everard Baths fire, the Anderson Theater and CBGB's attempted expansion, and the remarkable collection of artists, musicians, writers, and outsiders who found one another in a city that was simultaneously falling apart and exploding with creativity. Suzanne brings her own memories of New York and the New Wave era, while Paul digs into Gabriel's experience of turning history into fiction and why writing the novel was so much fun. And at one point, Gabriel shares a piece of CBGB history that he says nobody else knows about. They also discuss Steven Sprouse, William S. Burroughs, Holly Woodlawn, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, the transformation of New York nightlife, and whether the conditions that created that extraordinary downtown culture could ever happen again. This is a spoiler-free conversation, so you can listen even if The CBGB Conspiracy is still sitting on your TBR pile. Because sometimes a great book isn't the end of the conversation. It's where the stories begin.   Connect with Gabriel Rotello:GabrielRotello.com   The CBGB Conspiracy can be found at Amazon and anywhere else where books are sold.   More from the GenX Book Club Crew

Oh F*ck Yeah with Ruan Willow Podcast, Season 6, Episode 777: This is a replay of a previous audio episode to get the video version onto podcast apps for improved listener enjoyment and satisfaction. Discover the Goddess Within with Mind-blowing Vaginal Gymnastics Pompoir Empowering Women with author and coach Bel Di Lorenzo! #sexuality #sexualhealthmatters #sexualityeducation #femaleempowerment #empowerwomen #empowerment Guess what, the vagina is a muscle and it can be strengthened and utilized by women to enhance intimacy, sexual relations, and pleasure! Discovering the Art of Vaginal Gymnastics and techniques! Join Ruan Willow in an enlightening conversation with Bel Di Lorenzo, the CEO and founder of Goh!ddess, as they delve into the transformative practice of vaginal gymnastics, also known as pompoir. In this episode, Bel shares her journey of empowering women worldwide through the Goh!ddess Method, a practice that enhances female pleasure, boosts libido, and amplifies orgasms. Discover how mastering the pelvic floor muscles can lead to a more fulfilling sexual experience and why vaginal fitness is a game changer for women's health. Get the book "The Goh!dess Method" (affiliate link, podcast may receive commissions on sales, thank you!) https://amzn.to/403GUgj Bel explains the science behind pompoir, offering insights into the intricate control of pelvic floor muscles and the benefits it brings, from increased sexual frequency to the ability to experience penetrative orgasms. Learn about the various exercises and techniques that can be incorporated into your daily routine to strengthen these muscles and improve your sexual wellness, sexual health, and vaginal health. Explore the empowering stories of women who have transformed their lives through this practice, and find out how you can embark on your own journey of sexual empowerment and self-discovery. This is powerful sex education! Quotes from Bel Di Lorenzo "The stronger your pelvic floor muscles are, the stronger your orgasm response." "Your vagina is designed to give you pleasure." "With great power comes great responsibility." Quotes from Ruan Willow "Who doesn't want to have an amazing orgasm?" "Our bodies were created with pleasure in mind."  Website: http://www.gohddess.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gohddess  @gohddess  Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pompoir/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@goh.ddess Ruan's spicy Romantasy The Siren Who Couldn't Sing, book 1 in The Arching Hunger Series in Kindle Unlimited and on Amazon (as is book 1 Wingless Hunger) Affiliate link https://books.ruanwillowauthor.com/thesirenwhocouldntsing Podcast Merch! Wear Oh F*ck Yeah! Get Oh F*ck Yeah Podcast Merch T-shirts, tank tops, long sleeve shirts, mugs! Wear it sassy and hot! Support the show Join for $3 to get exclusive content Newsletters https://subscribepage.io/ruanwillow https://linktr.ee/RuanWillow

It's the end of Season 8 (what! how!), and we usually celebrate the end of the season with a read along of Sarah's new book, but since there is no new book, we have no choice but to go back to the beginning of “The Casino Series,” which is what Sarah calls The Rules of Scoundrels. We're reading A Rogue By Any Other Name, the first in the series focused on the rakish owners of The Fallen Angel, Sarah's casino. We talk Bourne, turning around big ships, writing sexy stained glass windows, and what it means to look back on the early part of a career.Next week, we're taking a little break, and then we'll be back with Season Nine of Fated Mates. As ever, we're so grateful to you for listening, reading and being a part of this community. We're nothing without you.If you'd like to spend more time talking about romance novels, join our Patreon! You'll get an extra monthly episode from us and access to the incredible readers and brilliant people on the Fated Mates Discord. Learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.NotesThe jellyfish thing is a myth, you don't have to pee on a jellyfish sting.All about the amygdala, or Amy for short if you think of her as that messy friend who will definitely lead you astray.JB Pritzker talked about the colors of school folders, and it's A MESS. Feel free to report back on your preferences for folder colors if you, like Sarah, are outraged.New York Times hosted a conversation with Tressie McMillam Cottom, Nadja Spiegelman, and Mary HK Choi called “Have We Turned Personality into a Diagnosis?” It's worth the listen!Is it true that Gen Z is this puritanical (the Puriteens!), or are they just worried that everything is cringe?JK Rowling is a piece of shit.Gambling has always been bad, but it's especially bad on your phone. Please talk to your kids about sports betting and make sure these apps are not on their phones.Crockfords moved a lot of money in the Regency.One of the big influences for Bourne & Penelope was Alfred de Vigny's poem Éloa, ou La sœur des anges about an angel who falls in love with a stranger who turns out to be Lucifer. English translations are tough to find, but here's a website that has part of it in translation.When you think of the The Fallen Angel (the club), you might think of the famous painting by Alexandre Cabanel, but that's from 1847!SponsorsMegan Frampton, author of Demons and Diplomacy, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.Madison Score, author of Wild About You, available in print, ebook or audiobook at Amazon.Tracy MacNish, author of Of the Ashes, available in print or ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.Hachette Books, publishers of Jennifer Givhan's The Sleeping Sisters, available in print, ebook or audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/8/25/s0849-a-rogue-by-any-other-name If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

In this week's episode, I take a look at ebook box sets and the advantages they offer both writers and readers. I also explain why I haven't done an ad update post in a while. Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week! This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Night series at my Payhip store: SUMMERNIGHT The coupon code is valid through September 7, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction, Writing Updates, and a Reader Question Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 317 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August the 21st, 2026 and today we are going to talk about advantages to using box sets. We'll also have a brief discussion on why I haven't posted an ad update in a while, and we'll have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Before we get to all that, let's start with Coupon of the Week. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Night series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SUMMERNIGHT. As always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through September the 7th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for the summer, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am 56,000 words into Blade of Visions, which I think puts me roughly somewhere in the neighborhood of about halfway through. I think the rough draft is going to end up being about 105 to 110,000 words when I get there, but we will find out. I'm also 5,000 words into Elven-Warlock, the next book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. In audiobook news, recording on Blade of Thieves and recording on Cloak of Worlds is finished. As of right now, you can get Cloak of Worlds at my Payhip store, but both Cloak of Worlds and Blade of Thieves should be available on Payhip and all the other audiobook stores before too much longer (once processing is done). So if you're looking for a new audiobook to listen to this summer, we will have ones for you very soon with Cloak of Worlds narrated by Hollis McCarthy and Blade of Thieves narrated by Brad Wills. So before we get to our main topic of box sets, let's answer a reader question, which is why I haven't done monthly ad post results for a while. The reason for that is it started in October of 2025 and [I] mostly stopped using Facebook ads. Facebook ads became drastically less effective as Meta added more and more badly designed AI targeting features to the ad platform. Now, why is this a bad thing? Am I refusing to use Facebook ads because of my frequently stated dislike of generative AI? No. The reason is that the AI targeting doesn't work nearly as well as the old system and ends up being a waste of money because the AI targeting is too broad and too random. This is bad because the key to successful online advertising is to narrow your audience as much as possible. What do I mean by this? Perhaps this example will help. Let's say, for example, you sell motorcycle parts online. Obviously when purchasing motorcycle parts, you need to match up with the exact model and year, otherwise you're going to run in trouble. Say you are selling a lot of parts for the Harley-Davidson V-Rod Muscle motorcycle model from 2009 and you want to sell them online to your customers. The best way to do that would be to target your ads as specifically as possible. In the US at least, motorcycle owners tend to be a bit older and wealthier and are more likely than not male. So you'd want to target your ads to men 60 and older who have expressed interest in Harley Davidson motorcycles and potentially in that specific model from 2009. Facebook used to let you target audiences to that level of granularity. However, in the last few years, Meta has jumped on the generative AI bandwagon along with nearly every other large technology corporation. It's followed the same trajectory as every other company that has used AI. The CEO gets a brainwave that AI is the inevitable future and doesn't want to be left behind. Employees are told to implement as many AI features as possible and to use AI for everything. That inevitably becomes part of the key performance indicators on their performance reviews, so the employees dutifully stuff badly designed AI features into everything in hopes of keeping their jobs the next time the stock price drops slightly. If you've wondered why AI nonsense seems to be stuffed into everything these days, that is why. Gradually, Facebook has eliminated the ability for granular targeting like I've discussed above in favor of their Advantage AI system, which does the targeting for you. There are two major problems with this. First, Advantage is a black box. You don't really see how it works and it isn't well documented anywhere online. Second, the targeting is way too broad. Advantage is really good at getting a lot of clicks on your ad, but this is the important part: the clicks on the ads don't usually convert to sales. Which is better: an ad that gets 10 clicks but results in five sales or an ad that gets 50 clicks and converts to one sale? From Facebook's point of view, the second is better, but it's not better for the advertiser. To return to the motorcycle parts example, say you're trying to sell those Harley-Davidson V-Rod Muscle 2009 parts and you try to run an ad with Advantage doing the targeting. You can't specifically target male or male motorcycle or Harley owners over the age of 60. No, you have to mention motorcycle and Harley parts in the ad text and hope that the system steers it correctly. What will happen is that the Advantage system will show the ad to a bunch of people who have no interest in Harley parts. Honda motorcycle owners will see it, as well Yamaha owners and probably people who own mopeds and e-bikes as well. Now, admittedly, in certain situations, this could work. Let's say you have a giant warehouse of motorcycle parts, which includes Honda and Yamaha parts, so there could be some overlap. If you have a big enough inventory of motorcycle parts, a broad targeting reach might work. The trouble is that books are very, very specific products and targeting ads outside of genre lines never works. Like if you're writing dark fantasy romance and the system shows your ad to someone who only reads World War II historical novels, it's not going to work at best and at worst, the reader will become annoyed and leave you a bad review. Even for someone like me who has 160 fantasy novels and a bunch of sci-fi novels, it wouldn't work. I could try advertising to fantasy novels, but Child of the Ghosts, Frostborn: The Gray Knight, Cloak of Dragons, and Stealth & Spells Online: Creation are all very different books in very different subgenres of fantasy. So I have in essence, a giant warehouse of books, but books are specific enough that trying to use Facebook Advantage to advertise them doesn't work. So now I don't really use Facebook ads. I did try again in June to boost Half-Elven Thief Omnibus One before its BookBub deal, and the results from the Facebook ads were in the bottom half of mediocre at best and outright useless at worst. The BookBub Feature Deal itself by contrast was excellent. When I have a new book out and I do the "I published a book" post on Facebook, I'll use the boost pull function, which shows it to more people based on my audience, which does increase engagement and isn't too expensive. But for the most part, I don't really use Facebook ads anywhere near as extensively as I used to. That said, I do a lot of BookBub and Amazon ads, way more than I did before Facebook ads became unusable. I'll typically run about 20 to 24 short BookBub campaigns a month advertising my permafree books on the non-Amazon stores. While I am not sure of the exact number, I think I have something like 550 Amazon ad campaigns running across about 35 different titles on Amazon. Fear not, this is less expensive than it sounds. I haven't posted much about it because it's a ton of data and I haven't figured out a way to do so in a concise and pithy way that isn't overwhelming or a giant wall of math and text. That said, there should be a way to do it, at least for the Amazon ads. Generally, Amazon ads are way more effective with Kindle Unlimited books and nonfiction, and BookBub ads are very effective for the non-Amazon stores, especially for permafree books like Frostborn: The Gray Knight and Child of the Ghosts. So that is why I haven't done an ad review roundup post in a while. Once I work out a good way to present the information with Amazon and BookBub ad data, I will probably start posting them again. 00:07:30 Main Topic: Ebook Box Sets [All prices referenced are in US Dollars] Now let's move on to our main topic this week, ebook box sets and why they're a good thing for both authors and readers. I will talk about four advantages of making an ebook box set, and then four things you should consider if you're interested in making them for your ebook series. An omnibus edition or a box set is a collection of several books in one series. They need to be books in the same series. It's not a sample of various books by one author or a collection of several books with a similar theme by different authors, which are common, especially in romance, but that's not what we're going to be talking about in this episode. For example, my Frostborn Omnibus One collection includes the first three books in my Frostborn series, and The Ghosts Omnibus One includes the first three books in The Ghosts series and a bonus short story as well. Before we get started, a note on the terminology. Although the term box set or ebook set means something much broader than omnibus edition, I will use ebook sets and omnibus editions interchangeably throughout this episode, mostly because omnibus is a bit of a mouthful to say that many times. So here are four reasons why you might want to consider making an omnibus edition for books in your series. #1: Series Starter If you don't want to go the perma-free route on your series, a competitively priced set of the first books in the series might be another option for you. The goal is always to make it easy and cheap to start a new series and a low-priced omnibus edition helps with drawing in new readers into a series. Having an omnibus of the first books in the series also means that you can periodically run sales on it. It's worth taking a short-term hit in the sales price if readers continue on to the next set or later books in the series. I've dealt with this with many of my omnibus editions, especially Frostborn Omnibus One, Cloak Mage Omnibus One, and The Ghosts Omnibus One many times, running deals to them when they were $0.99. That has inevitably resulted in good sales for the rest of the series and the audiobooks in the series. #2: Reader Convenience The main reason for creating ebook sets may be the cost savings for the book buyer, but another big reason is convenience for the reader. Many people struggle with knowing the correct order of books in a series, and omnibus editions act as guides through a series. Readers like the convenience of knowing they're reading them in the correct order, but only having to make one purchase to do that. Some people also don't like the way that their ebook libraries display series and prefer the omnibus editions for that reason. #3: Changes to Amazon's KDP royalty tier KDP bases its royalty rates for ebooks on the price. They just raised a ceiling of the 70% royalty tier from $9.99 to $12.99, which makes omnibus editions priced over $9.99 more profitable since they can now be priced as high as $12.99 and still be in the 70% royalty tier. Previously, ebooks over $9.99 were put in a lower royalty tier to encourage authors to price them under $10. If there are a significant number of books in your omnibus edition or your individual books are priced at over $6, this change to KDP's royalties benefits you the most. To give an example, if an ebook series were made into an omnibus edition priced at $12 before, it would've netted $3.60 in royalties. With the change in pricing tiers, that same omnibus edition would now make $8.40 for the author. That is a significant increase that makes omnibus editions more attractive to produce. #4: The Kindle Unlimited Advantage Omnibus editions are good for putting in Kindle Unlimited because readers are excited to get multiple books while only taking up one of the "spots" they have in their KU library. Since readers can currently only borrow 20 books at a time, some power readers try to maximize the perceived value of each book in that library and look for longer books and omnibus editions for that reason. Since KU subscribers have many options, providing them with an omnibus edition might help get them more invested in the series and interested in continuing it because if they finish the set, there are several books into it and have spent a significant amount of time with your characters. If you don't put the whole series into KU (which is not a great idea by the way), an omnibus edition of the first books in the series would be a better choice than just putting the first book in the series in KU. KU subscribers get very angry when only the first book in the series is in KU, especially if that book ends on a cliffhanger or if the book isn't clearly marked as being part of a series. An omnibus edition gives them a much deeper introduction to the series. It feels less like a bait and switch than just the first book would be. It's also advantageous for the writer because of the page reads. For example, right as of right now, Half-Elven Thief Omnibus One, which is in Kindle Unlimited, is set to only $0.99 an ebook, but I usually make a good deal more from that because of the page reads because people will check out the book in KU and then the amount of page reads for that book comes to approximately about $4 for a complete read. So if you have a popular box set in KU, you can make a good deal more from it from the page reads than you would from just pricing it at $0.99. When setting up a box set, here are four things to consider when making an ebook omnibus edition. #1: You need to learn about reader expectations about what an omnibus edition is. It is not a collection of short stories or some short stories attached to a single book. It is not a sample collection of books you have across different series. Those are separate things and there's nothing wrong with them, but they need to be handled differently. An omnibus edition should be at least three complete and consecutive books in a series. If there are things like short stories or bonus content beyond that, that's fine. But three full length books is what book buyers expect from an omnibus edition or a box set. #2: Book buyers expect an omnibus edition to be less expensive than buying the book separately. Even providing bonus content like short story or extra chapter does not change this cost expectation. There's also an expectation that the first omnibus edition will be less expensive than the later omnibus editions because this is a common promotional strategy. For myself, what I usually do is I make sure that the omnibus is a dollar or two cheaper than the combined books would be. For example, I just put out Cloak Mage Omnibus Four, which combines Cloak of Embers, Cloak of Titans, and Cloak of Illusion into one book. Those individual books are $5, and so together buying three of them together would be $15. The omnibus edition is $11.99, so that's a savings of $3 across the three books. For the first omnibus edition in the series, I usually price it a bit lower. The Ghosts Omnibus One and Half-Elven Thief Omnibus One are $0.99 right now, but that is so they can be loss leaders and even if they're not on sale, like Cloak Mage Omnibus One is I believe $5.99 right now and Frostborn Omnibus One is $4.99, so that is to act as kind of a loss leader to get people in the door to read the series. #3: Take the time to learn to make an omnibus edition correctly. You can't just throw the individual ebook files into a single one and have the readers be happy with that. You need to update the book's front matter and metadata, and omnibus editions will need a new ISBN or ASIN, depending on where you publish them. For a long time for the covers, I used to do what I called a quartered cover where you'd have the three covers and a bonus short story arranged in a grid, kind of like a windowpane to advertise that it was clearly an omnibus edition. Lately, Amazon has been cracking down on that and some of the other ebook platforms don't like that as well. So what I've been doing is I've been making custom covers that very clearly say like Cloak Mage Omnibus Four on them and making sure that the cover is distinct enough from the individual covers in the series that won't be mistaken for an individual title in the series. #4: The omnibus edition needs to be treated as a separate book when creating ads. Their marketing works differently than individual books. Don't just hope that readers will find it on their own. Omnibus editions need new blurbs, separate ad campaigns, and their own marketing push. It's okay to list them separately on your website, but be sure to link them to the original books as well. On my website, I have links for the omnibus editions under each book in the series that is part of one so the readers are aware right away as an option for them. So hopefully these tips and tricks will help you to set up omnibus editions for yourself as well. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you've listened to all the back episodes athttps://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you all next week.  

Welcome back to Part 2 of our exploration into the startling parallels between the Biblical Antichrist and the figure known as the Mahdi in Islamic eschatology. In this livestream, Pastor Ryan and Sarah continue to unpack why these two end-time figures are the same person, focusing on their primary candidate: “Our Guy in Damascus” the current president of Syria. In this episode, we discuss:The "Checkbox" Evidence: We review how “Our Guy in Damascus” fulfills 46 specific markers required for the Antichrist, ranging from his birthplace in Saudi Arabia to his direct descent from the prophet Muhammad.Aquiline Nose & Pathological Calm: Discover the specific physical and personality traits predicted in the Hadiths—such as a broad forehead, "aquiline" nose, and an unusual "dignified" calmness—that he exhibits in every public appearance.The 268 billion to 1 Naming Miracle: We break down the statistical impossibility of his family lineage. His name (Akmad), his father's name (Hussein), his grandfather's name (Ali), and his great-grandfather's name (Muhammad) align precisely with century-old Muslim prophecies.The Mortal Head Wound: We analyze the prophecy of the "mortal wound" from Revelation 13, discussing both the symbolic interpretation involving Palestinian statehood and the literal 2019 bomb blast that "Our Guy" miraculously survived.The Third Temple & The Dome of the Rock: Why would a Muslim leader want to rebuild the Jewish Temple? We explore the concept of "Bait al-Maqdis" and the shocking possibility that the Mahdi will be the one to initiate the construction of the Third Temple.The "God of Fortresses": We connect Daniel 11:38 and how “Our Guy” is already honoring this deity with gold and silver through sacred gifts like the Kiswah (the cloth covering of the Kaaba).Resources Mentioned:The Book: These Final Days, Part 3 by Ryan Speakman (Available on Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible).The Website: Visit thesefinaldays.org for the full list of 46 checkboxes and a free PDF on the truth about the Rapture.Classes: Join Pastor Ryan every other Thursday at 6:00 PM Pacific for the new series, "Is Jesus Coming Back Soon?"CONNECT WITH THESE FINAL DAYSWebsite: thesefinaldays.orgSubscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheseFinalDaysTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thesefinaldaysFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesefinaldays X: https://x.com/TheseFinalDays

How can you get your books surfaced when readers ask an AI what to read next? What are the hallmarks of authors and businesses that last more than a decade in the indie author industry? Ricardo Fayet gives his marketing tips after more than a decade at Reedsy. In the intro, Expanding Your Book's IP through Merchandising [Wish I'd Known Then]; Guide to writers conferences [Kindlepreneur]; Rick Rubin and Stephen Pressfield on resistance and the muse [Tetragrammaton]; Pulitzer Prize winners disclose AI usage [Nieman Lab]; My new rebuilt fiction site JFPenn.com. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Ricardo Fayet is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Reedsy, a marketplace for writers to find vetted freelancers, author training courses, and lots more. He's also the author of How to Market a Book and Amazon Ads for Authors. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How AI search actually finds and ranks the books it recommends Why keywords and search volume are disappearing as marketing metrics Building an internet footprint so your book is worth recommending Why Claude leans on Goodreads while ChatGPT and Gemini lean on Reddit Product is more important than marketing, and how to find your comp titles Passion, business sense and resilience in the authors who last You can find Ricardo at Reedsy.com. Transcript of the interview with Ricardo Fayet Jo: Ricardo Fayet is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Reedsy, a marketplace for writers to find vetted freelancers, author training courses, and lots more. He's also the author of How to Market a Book and Amazon Ads for Authors. So welcome back to the show, Ricardo. Ricardo: Thank you, Jo. It's been a while. Jo: It has been a while. As we were saying, it's been a decade, which is crazy, because you and I see each other at events and things. For anyone who doesn't know you— Tell us a bit more about you, where you're from, and also, what is Reedsy these days and how have things changed? Ricardo: Yes, sure. I think I'm hard to dissociate from Reedsy because my only background really is Reedsy. We started Reedsy right after business school for most of the founders. There are four founders, and I'm one of them. We've been going since 2014, so it's been 12 years. We started around the same time, and you started even earlier than we did, but we've had the chance to meet at quite a few conferences since. I think the main thing we're still known for is our marketplace. Since the very beginning, Reedsy is a curated marketplace where authors can come in and look for editors, cover designers, marketers, ghostwriters, literary translators, author website designers, pretty much any freelancer you would ever need to hire throughout your writing career. That's how we started. That's our main source of revenue and our main business. Since then, as you mentioned, we've also added courses, live events, so we've got a membership under Reedsy Learning. The main thing we're proud of right now is our writing tool, Reedsy Studio, because we've been pouring a lot of engineering talent into it over the past five, six years, and I think it's a really cool writing tool that is 90% free. It also does the formatting, so it's a good alternative to Vellum or Atticus for those who haven't purchased those tools. So there's a lot of things that Reedsy does at this point, which always makes it hard for me to describe what we do. Jo: But you generally serve writers. That's probably the crux of it. Ricardo: Exactly, yes. We're mostly at the production stage. The thing we say is we help authors make beautiful books, right? That's a little bit the tagline that applies to 90% of what we do, though we also help a little bit with the marketing side of things. Jo: And then just tell people where your accent is from. Ricardo: So I'm half French, half Italian from my parents, and I was born in Spain. So depending on my mood and the moment, it might be anywhere from French, Italian, Spanish. It's anyone's guess, really, at this point. Jo: Yes, exactly. You've been part of the indie author ecosystem, as you said, since 2014. You're often at the author conferences, and you stay abreast of everything that's going on. So what are the biggest changes you've seen in the industry since you started out? Like you said, you guys came from business school. You chose to come into the industry at a particular point, and yet things have changed. So what do you think are the biggest changes, and how have you seen authors adapt? Ricardo: It's crazy, the amount of things that happened in the past 10 years. Obviously we came into the industry as a result of Amazon launching Kindle Direct Publishing, and then the Kindle Store becoming one of the number one places where people buy books. That's what enabled self-publishing in the first place as an industry, and obviously we wouldn't exist without self-publishing being a thing. But then I think probably one of the biggest changes that happened was the introduction of Kindle Unlimited and various other subscription models. Perhaps as a response to that, afterwards, I would say direct sales is the other massive change that happened in the industry. The ability for authors to sell direct to their readers via their websites, or running Kickstarters, or basically the ability to reach your customers directly. Now, obviously, artificial intelligence is probably the biggest change of them all, not just in publishing, across every industry, but of course it's going to affect publishing very strongly, or it has already started making big waves. So I would say those are the three main changes that we've seen happening in the industry. Jo: Just interestingly, given that you're French, Italian, Spanish, European— Has the pace of change been the same in mainland Europe? Because you and I have also met up at European conferences, but I just get the sense that each individual European country, the UK included, as I include the UK in Europe, goes at a different speed. Ricardo: No, they definitely do. Our market at Reedsy is all in English. We only have an English website, and I would say 70% of our market is US, then 15% UK, and then Australia, New Zealand, et cetera. We do have clients in continental Europe, but they're mostly going to be American or British expats. A lot of retired people who write books and use Reedsy services. I think the main reason for that is that self-publishing as an industry hasn't really grown in Spain, France, Italy the way that it's grown in the US and the UK, probably because these are countries where book buying habits are a lot more traditional. So all my friends from high school and university in France, they all buy books, they all buy paper books. They all buy from bookstores. They don't really buy from Amazon that much. They love the smell of paper, all these sorts of things. So obviously that makes it harder for indie authors in those countries because they cannot place their books in the places where people buy them, which is traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores, or at least it's much harder. So there is an indie movement in those countries, but it's much smaller. I would say Germany is maybe the exception in Europe, where I've seen more and more full-time indie authors, but I don't think it's a market that's comparable even to the UK. Jo: Interesting. Okay, so let's go to marketing, because you love marketing, you have a newsletter about it, and you have a book, How to Market a Book, same title as mine, and we've found each other in our Also Boughts over the years. You have, however, updated yours several times. 2025 was your last update. Mine was 2016, so yours is definitely the most up-to-date one. So what are your thoughts on how authors can reach readers now? And let's split this into two. Let's start with some tips for new authors who just have maybe one book and are really just starting out. Ricardo: Yes, first of all, sorry for stealing your title. Jo: Oh, you know, it's never been a problem. Ricardo: We were trying to come up with something… I know, I know, I know. But still, we wanted something more original, and then we realised that for SEO purposes, that's the title we should really go for. The good thing is, if you search “how to market a book” on pretty much any retailer, you're going to find your book or mine in any order really, but those are going to be the top two books to this day, thankfully, so I'm good with that. I think in terms of marketing tips for new authors who have just the one book, I'd say, despite all the changes in the industry, the basics of marketing still stay the same. One of my big mantras when it comes to marketing is that product is more important than marketing. So having a great book is going to be more important, in my opinion, than being a great marketer. Having a great product. By that, I generally don't talk about literary value or prose or anything like that, just because I'm not a book critic. I'm not an editor. My opinion on whether a book is good or not is worth zero. From a marketing standpoint, for me, a good book is one that resonates with its intended audience. So the first step for newer authors is to basically figure out who they wrote this book for, right? Have an idea of who their target market is. A great way to do that, without entering into marketing jargon like proto-personas and stuff like that, is to think in terms of comp titles, comparable titles. I think that's probably the base of any marketing, whether traditional publishing houses or indie authors, to think, “Okay, which other books out there are similar to mine?” If your book is completely unique, you have, I would say, 99.9% chance of not selling, because your market doesn't exist, and 0.01% chance of creating your own market and completely dominating it, right? So being unique is not necessarily a bad thing, but I would say 99% of the time, it is. Obviously being unique within an existing niche, within an existing market, that's completely different, but you need to work on some comparable titles. So I would say that's where I would start, and that's one of the things that AI is great at. If you even just plug in your book into an AI chat that has enough context, if you're comfortable doing that of course, or if you plug in a synopsis, like a long synopsis, you can basically ask the AI chats, “Okay, what would be some comp titles?” Either you'll have heard of those books, and you'll think, “Okay, they're good comps,” or you may not have heard of them, in which case I would really recommend buying them and reading them and seeing whether they're comps or not. I think that's where marketing starts. Jo: Yes, and we might come back to that for book discoverability. Well, let's just talk about it now, because I now pretty much use Claude for discovering books as well. I just find that the Amazon search, for nonfiction it works really well, right? As you said, if you want to learn how to market a book, you just search “how to market a book”, and our books are very well titled for that. But for fiction, it's so difficult to find new books and comp titles, especially if you don't write in a clear genre, which I don't. I know lots of people do. So we're writing cross-genre. So in terms of book discoverability, I know you've been looking into SEO for books and all of that. What are your thoughts on how authors can more effectively have their books surfaced if people are using the AIs for finding books? Ricardo: That's a very big topic. That's one of my favourite topics right now. That's what I talk about in my marketing newsletter, and I want to start a Substack on the topic as well, because I think it is the future of book discoverability. As you say, search on Amazon isn't great, and if it's not great on Amazon, you don't even want to imagine on Google Play, Kobo, all these sorts of places, right? If you search on Kobo or Apple Books or Google Play for witch cozy mysteries, the top 10 books are going to have exactly “witch cozy mystery” in the title or the subtitle or the series title, right? Jo: Yes. Ricardo: Search is very simple on those sites, so it's very easy to game, but it's terrible as an experience for readers. So I do think that a big part of search is going to move to AI, and now you have Rufus within Amazon itself that appears as a chatbot and encourages you to talk with it, to ask for recommendations. In the beginning Rufus was really terrible, but now I recommend authors play with it. In general, I recommend when it comes to AI discoverability that authors play with all the AI search tools. So it's going to be Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Rufus within Amazon. Just like we talked about comp titles, right, ask for something like, “What would you recommend for fans of this book? Which other books would you recommend?” Or if you're looking for something specific that describes your book, what books would you recommend on… I think one of your examples was fiction around masonry or something like that, right? Jo: I always say, for example, if you ask for action adventure thrillers on pretty much anywhere, you're going to get 20 books by male authors. For those of us who are female authors, but also who have female main characters, you can then be far more granular. That's just not something that necessarily works on Amazon. So, action adventure thrillers with female protagonists written by female indie authors, which is very specific. That will work in AI, whereas that definitely won't work on Amazon. Ricardo: Exactly. So one of the great things about AI search, and terrible things at the same time, is that the concept of keyword is lost, right? So we title our books How to Market a Book because the keyword that people would search for is “how to market a book”, or “book marketing for authors”. Those were the two keywords that had the biggest search volume if we looked at Google Keyword Planner, or any search tools that give you keyword volume. When it comes to AI search, since it's conversational, and it's very personalised, and it can go as niche as you want, keywords are going to disappear, and search volume as a metric is going to disappear. The search you just told me about, maybe there are 10 people who are going to run it exactly. Most people are going to run variations of that. Since you can go as granular as you want, it's going to be very long phrases, very long sentences. So the whole concept of keywords, search volume, SEO, is going to disappear in favour of what some people call GEO, generative engine optimisation, AIO, AI optimisation, AI search optimisation. There's a bunch of names for it, but it is a different discipline. It still works on the basis of Google SEO because what most of these search engines will do is they're going to search the internet, right? They've been trained on a lot of information, but not all of that information is current. Most of these models have been trained on documents and web pages before 2021. That's why when you used the very early versions of ChatGPT, and you asked it about current events or current books, it didn't find it. It didn't have that information. Now all these models have the ability to search the web, and they do that really effectively. So the first thing they're going to do if you run a search like that is they're going to run dozens of different searches on Google or a similar search engine. Action thriller books with female protagonists. Action thriller books with female protagonists by indie authors. Action thriller books by indie authors. They're going to create what I call a corpus, so a massive document of information with candidates, books that probably meet those criteria that they have found through regular web searches. Then they're going to go through all those books and determine which are the most relevant to recommend, and they'll return with that. Then they'll usually have a verification layer as well, which is, okay, I have these five books that I want to recommend to this user, but I just want to make sure first that they are written by indie authors, that they do have a female protagonist, et cetera. And if I'm not able to verify that, I'll flag it in my answer to them. So there are these three layers. Web search, then ranking of the book candidates, and finally a verification layer, and then they serve you the answer. Obviously, that's really powerful. If that's the way that search is headed, which I firmly believe, then we as authors need to learn how to get our books in there. Jo: Yes. It's so interesting, and I do this all the time. Really niche stuff, like a thriller about anatomical Venuses, which are these models from anatomy museums and stuff like that, with an edge of the supernatural. What is brilliant is that you can find the books that come up. I actually got one that I read and reviewed, and it was fantastic. So I love the more granular thing, but we're really in the very long tail now, right? It feels like you can write a very nuanced book, and it will be surfaced, but only by a few people. So do we have to write our books and then try to not even retrofit them in the way that we used to? We used to try and figure out the seven keywords and all of that kind of thing, and now I almost feel like we just get to be grownups, where you just get to write the book and put it out there, and these things are more intelligent than the search terms. Ricardo: Yes, absolutely. I think in terms of the variety of books that are going to be read and discovered, that's amazing. A little bit like the whole indie publishing movement was amazing, because if you remove the traditional publishing gatekeepers, then suddenly zombie books aren't dead anymore. Zombies are alive again. They've… Jo: Come to life. Ricardo: They've come alive, and so you get a bunch of zombie books again. It's not a small niche audience. It's actually a pretty big niche audience that loves zombie books, and suddenly they have those to consume. This is a little bit similar on a much, much bigger and more granular scale, because anyone can find exactly the kind of book that they're looking for, with the tropes they want, with the type of characters they want, with the type of author they want, and you can basically use any kind of filter. So for discoverability on the side of the reader, that's great. For the authors, it doesn't mean that you can just write whatever you want and then rest, and readers will find them. Because your books still need to have generated a certain internet footprint and a certain review footprint in order to become interesting or recommendable to AI search engines, right? Unless you're the only book that an AI search engine can recommend for that specific search, and yours was very specific, so it might have been the only one. If there are other candidates, the AI search engines are pretty smart. They're going to recommend the candidates that have more reviews, better reviews, or are more famous, that have more, when I talk about internet footprint, more pages talking about them on the internet. That's for me the big finding I've seen. The more pages you have on the internet talking about your book, so that could be book review sites, that could be Goodreads lists, Listopia lists, anywhere on the internet where your book is mentioned, that creates a footprint for it. The more footprints, the more famous your book looks to AI search engines, and so the more worthy of recommendations it is to them. Jo: Yes, and this is one reason why I now ask people, especially when you sell direct, or say you have a Kickstarter and you want reviews, I ask people if they can review on Goodreads. Obviously Goodreads is owned by Amazon, but it is far more searchable by the bots than Amazon is. I sometimes find that Amazon gets blocked. Or Amazon blocks some of the bots, let's put it that way. They might change over time. They own 15% of Anthropic or something. But Goodreads I feel like does get indexed, and I'm not willing to engage on Reddit. I know Reddit is another popular one. Just be very clear on social media, because some people think, oh, I just need loads of influencers to talk about my book, and that will impact the AIs. But I find that social media just almost isn't even there. Ricardo: It depends on which social media. For me, Reddit is a social medium, right? It's a very weird one, but it's obviously the number one social medium used by AI search engines, and it's pretty dodgy stuff with lots of conflicts of interest, because Google has a paid partnership with Reddit. I think Sam Altman has shares in Reddit. So both OpenAI and Google Gemini heavily rely on Reddit for their AI answers, right? If you ask anything from ChatGPT or Gemini, I'd say there are very high chances that in the sources and the citations of the answer, you're going to find Reddit, right? That goes for books as well. Every time you ask for book recommendations, Reddit is going to be big for those two AI search engines. Claude, it's a little bit different. They do have a little bit of a relationship with Reddit, but I don't think it's as big. I found that Claude relies heavily on Goodreads, not Reddit. To me, Goodreads is another social medium at the end of the day, right? It's not the kind of social medium we think of, like… Jo: It's not TikTok. Ricardo: It's not TikTok. TikTok is surfaced a little bit, but not that much. It might become more surfaced in the future, but right now what I've found is, it's really Reddit and Goodreads. Facebook, LinkedIn, but LinkedIn is big for nonfiction topics more than fiction, because there are just not a lot of fiction readers, sorry, talking about their favourite books on LinkedIn. They usually go to other places for that. Jo: Yes, it's really interesting. So obviously TikTok has its own BookTok thing, so some people are finding books on BookTok, and some people like me are finding books through asking Claude, and that's just my overwhelming feeling about the industry. We talked earlier about what's changed. When I started, so 2006, there wasn't even KDP, and then KDP arrives, then you came in 2014, and probably until maybe a few years after that, there was one way to self-publish. Then what's happened since is this kind of splintering. There are so many ways to self-publish. There are so many ways to reach readers. There are so many ways to market. So someone, for example, could sell direct on TikTok Shop, only market through TikTok, and you wouldn't even know that they existed over in another ecosystem, right? So do you feel like that's happened too, this total splintering? Ricardo: Absolutely. I think there are so many different ways in which you can reach your audience now and monetise it as well, that it's absolutely possible. We both know examples of authors who are only visible to their TikTok niche, right? I think the big difference is also monetisation, because earlier you also had different ways of becoming well-known. Like you had Facebook, you had potentially Twitter, back when it was Twitter. Various social media, word of mouth. But where people bought books was Amazon. So that was your monetisation. It was either selling your book on Amazon, or potentially getting KU reads after that when KU launched. Now you can sell on TikTok, you can sell direct, you can run Kickstarters, you can start a Patreon or Substack and make your money through there. There are pretty much infinite ways through which you can monetise your content as a creator. Most of those places will also have a discoverability engine built in, so you can not only sell through there and make money through there, but also grow an audience there. That's probably the biggest competition that Amazon has ever had to face, is this sort of splintering. For us authors and content creators in general, it's amazing, because it's a bunch of different opportunities. Jo: Yes, and I think probably that's circling back to marketing. As we've said, some things have changed, some things stay the same. Is the email list still the number one way to market, do you think, for authors who want a long-term career? Ricardo: I think so. It's just the one thing you really own that allows you to communicate with readers, right? Because even if you build a following on TikTok, TikTok can change. The things we said about Facebook 10 years ago, if you build your Facebook group, Facebook can change, and Facebook changed. Facebook destroyed the reach of pages, and now groups also aren't amazing, et cetera. So the same thing that happened to Facebook can happen to TikTok, can happen to any other social media. Substack is a bit of a hybrid because it is a newsletter, it is a mailing list, but it also has a discoverability engine built in. So I still wouldn't really go all in on Substack. The great advantage there is that you do own the emails, right? So you can move away from it at some point. For me, the email list is the one thing that you are completely in control of. Personally, the main thing I check is my emails every day. I spend more time in my inbox than anywhere else, and I think that's probably the case for most people. So I do think, despite the influx of mails that readers are getting in their inbox, I still think it's one of the most important marketing tools for authors. Jo: Yes, and I still remember when I started my list in December 2008, and I still have people on the list who've been with me that whole time, and have moved email list services several times as well. So I think that's important too. The care of that list too is so important. One of the things that I am annoyed about with Substack, I don't have a Substack, but when I follow some people's, it's always constantly trying to get you to sign up to other people's lists, trying to subscribe you to this or that or the other. I'm like, “That's so annoying.” Now I've found on all these email services they're trying to pair you with other creators and cross-promote and all of this. So it feels like even the email list is becoming a difficult place unless you really protect it. So just protecting your list, I think, and remembering that those are people. Those are people who've bought your books, or people who read your emails. Like people listening to this, these are humans. Sure, some bot might be looking at the transcript, but humans listening to this are individual humans with individual email lists. We tend to forget that, don't we, as you get a bigger list. You think about it as a big number, whereas it's still individual people. Ricardo: Yes, it becomes a number, it becomes metrics, the open rate, the click rate, and all that. But the great thing about email is that you get replies in your inbox. There you remember that they're actual human beings who write you back. I think for readers, the ability to write back to an author and get a response is just amazing, right? If you write to your favourite author and they write back to you, that's the best feeling ever as a reader. So I think email is still one of the best ways to turn your readers into fans and into super fans of your brand, by just interacting with them and answering them. Because yes, you can answer comments on TikTok, Facebook, and all those places, but it doesn't feel the same as an author answering you in your inbox, I feel. So you do get that ability to create a real connection with readers directly through email. Jo: Yes, and I think that trust and the reputation is so important. Just in terms of seeing the authors that you've seen over the years, like I said, you've been going to a lot of the author conferences. You know a lot of the authors in the industry. A lot of people will know you from events. But you've also seen authors come and go, and you've seen vendors come and go. Both of us have seen people arrive, and we'd be like, “Oh, yes, I wonder how long they're going to last.” Then some people do and some people don't. So what are some of the elements that you've noticed about the businesses that last more than a decade? Ricardo: I think they need to solve a genuine problem, or offer a genuinely better solution than one that already exists. I see a lot of businesses come in and they do what another vendor already does, without doing it necessarily better. Those businesses tend to disappear, or linger there, but you don't really hear about them again. When they solve a real need… I still remember when BookFunnel came out, and they've since become massive with one very, very basic thing, which is, “We will take care of delivering your ebook files to readers.” That's how they started, and that's how they became massive. To me at the time, I was like, “That seems like a very small problem,” because I can just email an ebook file. I didn't realise that it was so complicated for a lot of readers to upload files to their Kindle or other devices, and that having a service that takes care of that for you is just massively helpful. I realised that when I published my books, actually. So businesses that solve even micro or apparently very small problems, but they really solve them effectively, they stay. Others that surf on trends, they tend to disappear when the trend disappears. When there's a new marketing trend, and that trend stops working, then those businesses tend to go. Jo: Yes, and what about the authors who last? Because let's face it, most of us don't solve a problem in a different way. Maybe you could say we solve your entertainment problem in a different version to your last book. What about the authors who last long term? What have you noticed about them? Ricardo: Two things. So the first one… Maybe three things. First one is passion. I always say to people who are looking to start self-publishing, I always say that publishing in general is probably one of the worst ways to make money. It's awful. You can pick up any other occupation and it's probably going to be easier to make money. So writers who make a career do it because they need to write, because they have a passion for writing. So a lot of people who come into the industry thinking, “I've heard about all these self-publishing success stories. Surely I can write a book and I can market it. It's not that hard. So that's going to be a great way to make quick bucks,” those generally don't last, because they don't have that genuine passion. The first hurdle they're going to face—and there's going to be a bunch of them along the way—they're going to quit. The second thing is business sense, or business education, the basics of business, right? Thinking in terms of marketing, thinking in terms of who's my reader, unit economics. If I'm selling my books at $3.99, I shouldn't be spending a ton of money. If I just have one book at $3.99, I cannot afford to pay $5 on ads to generate a sale. So those kinds of basic economics or business knowledge, I think, if not a requirement, it's a massive plus. The third thing is resilience. The industry has changed a lot, as you mentioned. There are a bunch of ways now to reach an audience. There are a bunch of ways to make money. It can also be distracting, because you go to one of these conferences and you go back thinking, “Oh, I've got to create my own website, sell direct. I've got to launch my Substack. I have to use Claude Code for my ads,” and three more things, “and I have to set up my TikTok Shop and do TikTok Lives to sell books,” right? Jo: All of those by next week. That's why we go to the conference. Ricardo: Exactly. All those by next week, right? And during that one week after the conference, you have the energy to start implementing all those things, but afterwards you lose that energy and you go back to, “I just want to quit.” So you need to have some sort of resilience, and the business sense of, “Okay, I'm going to try this for the next six months, and I'm going to stick to it, and I'm going to see whether it works or not. And if it doesn't work, I'm not just going to despair. I'm going to try something else.” That goes for marketing tactics, but also goes for books. Most authors I know who make a living writing, they didn't get there with their first book or even their first series. A lot of times I see authors who write a couple of series, and those series do okay. They sell a little bit, but not much, and it doesn't afford them to quit their day job. Then suddenly, based on what they've learned with those first two series and what they've learned potentially going to conferences or listening to podcasts like this, et cetera, they write a third series that's a hit. That's a hit, and that's instantly much easier to market, and that's when they can afford to go full time and write full time, because they've found that sort of product market fit. And product market fit for me is the main thing for marketing in general and for authors in particular. Until you find that, everything is really difficult from a marketing perspective. But finding it usually requires writing more than one book and more than one series, because you're rarely going to get the big lottery ticket on the first try. Jo: Or ever. I think it's really important. I've never had a breakout book, but I've made good money every year. I think, and Hugh Howey said this, that the real story of self-publishing is not the people who make seven figures a year, it's the people who can go on a holiday once a year, or the people who can just put a bit towards their mortgage or whatever. So you may never have a breakout series. I think that's really important, too. Ricardo: That's true. Jo: That's true. You can just keep writing and make all right money and be what we call in the mid-list. Ricardo: Yes, but you've got to keep going. You've got to have that resilience to keep going, probably because it's your passion. Exactly. You're not chasing that seven figure series. You're writing because you need to write. Jo: Yes, and you can't stop, and you get the bug. I think when you're writing that first book, I'm not sure if people understand that you either get the bug or you don't, I think. You've written a couple of books now. Do you think you have the bug, or is it more about the business? Ricardo: I don't have the bug. I definitely don't have the bug. I would've kept writing otherwise. Jo: You're a technologist, right? Ricardo: Yes. I'm more of a technologist, more of a marketer. To write my first book, How to Market a Book, I actually had to write newsletters, because that I can manage, right? One newsletter a week. Now I don't even manage that. I send it once every two weeks when I can even manage that pace. But back then I did one newsletter a week, and that's how I wrote my first book. I then put all these newsletters together, and that was before the age of AI, so I couldn't just dump all that into ChatGPT and tell it, “Create me a book based on that.” I had to do it myself. Jo: Oh, terrible. Ricardo: Terrible, I know. The days when we had to work. No, but that was a really good experiment. The second book, Amazon Ads for Authors, I actually wrote it from scratch, and I didn't love the experience. I loved the finished product, I'm very proud of it, but I didn't enjoy the experience of writing it. Amazon Ads is not the most exciting topic in the world. Even for people like me, who actually enjoy Amazon Ads, it's not super exciting to write about. The fact of having to write that whole book from scratch, I didn't love the experience. So now I do want to write a third book at some point, but I think it'll probably be in the format of the first one. Like, when I finish my series of newsletters on AI search and AI discoverability, I might do a booklet or something around it, but we'll have to see. It's not my favourite thing. It's a good thing I don't need to. Good thing I'm not an author, basically. Jo: No, but I think that's really great to recognise. You actually have written books that support your business, and that is very common for nonfiction writers. That's completely normal for nonfiction authors. So I think that's another important thing for people to recognise, is that the reasons we write are different, the reasons we market are different, and we all have different approaches. As we wind up, and obviously you talked a bit there about how easy it is to generate books with AI, and that is probably one of the biggest things that people are worried about. Now, those of us like you and I have been talking about AI at conferences and things for years now. Neither of us are afraid of it, I think basically because both of us use it, and we're technologists, so we just get on with it. There is so much fear in the community. There's so much negativity. You mentioned Substack, and now they've integrated Pangram, which is renowned for false positives around what is written with AI, and so people are very worried. If we look forward and we look at the next decade, this is not going away. This is going to change a lot of things. So how should authors be thinking about AI, do you think, if they want to prepare for the next decade? Ricardo: I think they need to play around with it, because you and I know that until you actually use it, you don't realise what it's capable of. We've both had these moments of “Oh my God, I'm going to be out of a job,” or “Oh my God, this is incredible,” the kind of things it's able to do. You also realise by using it the things it's not great at, or the things it can be good at but needing a lot of human input. There are courses out there, there are books, there are a lot of things, but for me, the most important thing is to start playing around with it. So you can pick one specific topic to play around with. Either something that you've been meaning to get into for years and haven't done, or something that really annoys you. Looking at the results of your Facebook ads, for example. If you run Facebook ads in the first place, and when you log into your Meta dashboard you cannot make sense of it, take screenshots or download the data, feed it to an AI chat, and talk with it. One of my biggest tips when talking to AI chats is asking them questions rather than asking them for things to do. Because if you just feed it your advertising data and you tell it, “Tell me what I should do,” the chat has no context about what your ads are about, what your goal is, et cetera, et cetera. If you feed it just a screenshot and you say, “Here are my ads. I would like you to help me make sense of them. What do you need to know from me in order to help me with this?” Then it's going to start asking you questions. “Okay, what are you advertising?” They're books. “Okay, what kind of books? Where are you selling? Are your ads going straight to Amazon or retailers, or are they going to your website? If you sell direct, okay, are these conversion ads?” Et cetera, et cetera. So you build that context, and they can help you with it. So that's just one example, but I would pick one thing that you want to test AI with, with zero expectations. Don't expect that by the end of the week you'll have a full system for understanding your Meta ads thanks to AI. You might get to that or you might not, but at least you'll play with it and you'll understand its capabilities, and have a sort of understanding of how it works and how you can potentially use it for other things. I think that's the best way to adapt, because once you play with it, you start thinking. You're walking the dog and you're just thinking, “Ha, I could maybe use it for this thing or that other thing,” and that's how you progressively become more familiar with it. I think there are a lot of worries around AI, but as you say, it's there to stay. So far, I think I was looking at data this morning, and the unemployment rate in the US has stayed stable ever since ChatGPT was introduced two years ago. So there are a lot of narratives out there around how it's going to replace humans, it's going to replace jobs, et cetera, which it might do. I'm not great at predictions usually, but so far it hasn't. What it will definitely do, however, is completely change the way we work. Obviously AI was one of our big reckonings at Reedsy, because we run a marketplace. Our main business model is the marketplace, where authors come in and look for editors, for marketers, for cover designers, for translators, and some of these domains and services are being transformed by AI, right? AI translations are massive right now. We haven't really seen a decline at all on the Reedsy marketplace, but we're prepared for it. It might very well happen, but what we think is happening, or is going to happen, is professionals using AI tools to provide a better output or a faster output or a cheaper output, or all three of these things. So for example, we now have literary translators who say they're open to editing AI translations, right? So you can come in, you can have your book translated with AI, whichever tool or method you choose for that. Then if you want a set of human eyes on it, you can hire a literary translator who's open to working on an AI-translated manuscript, and that's obviously going to be much, much cheaper than paying 10 cents per word from scratch for a literary translator. I'm not necessarily recommending you completely bypass literary translators, or that you go this way, but you have options, right? You have options for different sets of budgets. I think all these human editors, narrators, translators, designers, et cetera, they're not going to disappear, but they might have to reinvent the way they work in the future. Jo: As we all are doing. As you say, for me mostly it's the business side, getting Claude to help me with business stuff. Like even bookkeeping. There are bills that we've all been paying for years that we can now maybe reduce, and reducing costs as well as increasing profit is obviously good business sense. So, interesting times. But just as we wrap up, what are you excited about in what's coming? How do you see Reedsy shaping up in the next decade? What is coming for you and Reedsy? Ricardo: We're really excited about the decade to come, because obviously 10 years for a startup is a long time. I think most startups after 10 years, the founders are gone. Jo: Yes. Ricardo: Or they've exited or they've sold or whatever. We've stayed, we're the same founders, and we're still as excited because I think we have new products, right? We're working on new things. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Reedsy Studio, our writing tool, is probably one of the things we're most excited about, because first, it's getting adopted very fast. It has startup-like growth that we hadn't seen for other products in a long time, and it has very cool technology built in. We probably have a team of 10, 15 engineers now working full time on it and adding a lot of things. So we've added templates for plotting your book, with relationships within different characters and places and magic systems and things like that. We've added writing goals and writing statistics. We still have the free exports. One very cool thing we've added is real time collaboration. So just like Google Docs, you can write in real time with a co-author, or you can get an editor to work in there live with track changes. So you could have an editor working on chapter one while you're writing chapter three, for example. That kind of thing. It's really powerful technology, and that's one of the things we're really excited about for the future. A business, just like authors, we've got to reinvent ourselves. We've got to find ways to keep things exciting and keep motivated, and that is definitely one of them. When adoption goes along with it, then that's obviously super satisfying. Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and Reedsy online? Ricardo: So Reedsy you can find at reedsy.com, R-E-E-D-S-Y.com. And there you'll find the whole suite of tools and services. For me, you can find me mostly by email, as I mentioned. That's the one place I check consistently every day, and my email address is ricardo@reedsy.com. So again, R-E-E-D-S-Y.com and ricardo@reedsy.com. You can email me any questions you have about this episode, about AI book discoverability, about marketing, about Reedsy. I always try to answer every email I get, because I think when we started Reedsy, I really appreciated people like you, and some other agents and editors and authors we contacted who were influential in the industry, who actually answered us and took the time to do that. So now I try to answer every email I get, because I feel like we've been very lucky in the beginning to have those people answering our emails, so we should do the same. Jo: Oh, well, thanks so much for your time, Ricardo. That was great. Ricardo: Thank you, Jo. Thanks for having me again.The post Book Marketing, AI Book Discoverability, And Resilience, With Ricardo Fayet first appeared on The Creative Penn.

The curse has been broken! Devil's Wood is now available as an ebook and paperback on Amazon (including Kindle Unlimited), and soon through Ingram for wider distribution. Today on the Fearsome Fiction podcast I offer a short introduction on the book's release, then treat listeners to the Devil's Wood mythology, all part of The Devil's Wood project. Check it out at TheDevilsWood dotcom for much more, and listen to this origin story and the legend behind it all.

This week from a galaxy far, far away with Jon Justice.- The future of Star Wars is here and Jon Justice is covering it.- Listener feedback SUPPORT JON JUSTICE AND PICK UP YOUR COPY OF THE EMBARK, SPACE OPERA SERIESAn exciting mix of Fast and Furious, Star Wars, Ready Player One and the sci-fi adventures of the 70's - 2000'sEMBARK: Book 1 and EMBARK: Treasure in Darkness (Book 2) EMBARK: The Vanishing War (Book 3) Gahan Corbijn and the Asteroid of Misfortune, The Rocket Queen (Book 5) Fear the Dangerous Night (Book 6) are available now in ebook, paperback, audiobook and free on Kindle Unlimited!EMBARK Battle Planet (Book 7) is now available!https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K7LLFZYEmail: TalkShowNerd@gmail.com@X @JonJusticeInstagram TheJonJusticeFacebook Jon Justice

En el último especial de Astrobitácora, hablamos de un estudio sorprendente: un grupo de investigadores ha descubierto un agujero negro supermasivo muy lejos del centro de su galaxia... donde también hay un agujero negro supermasivo todavía más masivo (valga la redundancia). ¿Cómo es posible? Además, fue descubierto por la destrucción de una estrella... Y, por si todo esto no fuera suficiente, también hablo de "¿Y cómo hemos llegado aquí?", mi nuevo libro de divulgación, que ya está a la venta (y en Kindle Unlimited) en Amazon: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0HF8W8WNF Música: Epidemic Sound

This week in the world we live in and life in general w/ host Jon Justice - The latest insights into the bands future - Classic pop retrospective- Listener feed back SUPPORT JON JUSTICE BY PICKING UP YOUR COPY OF THE EMBARK, THE SCIENCE FICTION SERIES WRITTEN BY JON JUSTICEAn exciting mix of Fast and Furious, Star Wars, Ready Player One and the sci-fi adventures of the 70's - 1990'sEMBARK: Book 1 and EMBARK: Treasure in Darkness (Book 2) EMBARK: The Vanishing War (Book 3) Gahan Corbijn and the Asteroid of Misfortune, The Rocket Queen (Book 5) Fear the Dangerous Night (Book 6) are available now in ebook, paperback, audiobook and free on Kindle Unlimited!EMBARK Battle Planet (Book 7) is now available!https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K7LLFZY50'S DEPECHE MODEhttps://youtu.be/Vt69FeFz-ko?si=xmqmYcxCZa4q9P_GLatest drink and chat with Rob Rohm https://youtu.be/rXs7iZX1tfUEmail: TalkShowNerd@gmail.com@X @JonJusticeInstagram TheJonJusticeFacebook Jon Justice

It's the Season 3 finale, and the Battle of Tumbleton is a disaster for everyone involved — Ulf betrays both sides, Ormund gets a knife from behind in the behind, and Daemon loses his big duel. Meanwhile Aegon turns up alive at Harrenhal and Rhaenyra's spiral in King's Landing ends in tragedy. Tim and Mike close out the season, tally the final C*nt Count, and look ahead to the long wait for Season 4.Subscribe to our newsletter at watchersonthecouch.com for off season updates and show announcements.Tim's got a sword-and-sorcery novel out too: The Lightless Moon and the Starfall Horror, on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

We're talking tattoos and body art this week! You might not have a tattoo, but odds are you've read a few thousand of them, as romance novels love a main character with a message…right on their skin. We talk about some of our favorite tattoo romances, about what tattoos represent, why they're so sexy, and why romance loves a tattoo artist. Every one of these books is a banger…enjoy filling your end of summer TBR with them.Come talk about your favorite romances with tattoos or about romance in general over on our Patreon! You'll get an extra monthly episode from us and access to the incredible readers and brilliant people on the Fated Mates Discord. Learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.Our next read along, in two weeks, is Sarah's A Rogue By Any Other Name, the first in her casino series. This is one we've gotten a bunch of requests for, and so, it will be our final read along of the season. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.BooksThe Montgomery Ink series by Carrie Ann RyanThe Duke with the Dragon Tattoo by Kerrigan ByrneTo Desire a Devil by Elizabeth HoytThe Magpie Lord by KJ CharlesDaring and the Duke by Sarah MacLeanThese Summer Storms by Sarah MacLeanMerry Inkmas by Talia HibbertRepeat by Kylie ScottWritten on his Skin by Simone StarkThree Dirty Secrets by Nikki SloaneUnder Her Skin by Adriana AndersPermanent Ink by Avon Gale and Piper VaughnSin & Ink by Naima SimoneReaper's Legacy by Joanna WyldeHard as it Gets by Laura KayeNotesTattoos have a long history tangled up with colonization, which is why for a long time they were thought to be stigmatizing. They are definitely more mainstream now, which means tattoo culture is changing which has caused its own clashes, but they also aren't thought of as class markers anymore.All about sextants.Merry Inkmas is actually Talia's second book, her first was Bad for the Boss, which is no longer in print. Jen reviewed both of those for The Book Queen when they were released.Check out the secret tattoos collection on our website.SponsorsEllie Devine, author of The Survival Guide to Alexander McBryde, available in print or ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.E. Kennedy, author of Thornbird, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.Harpercollins, publishers of Spellfire by Agatha WIllow, available in print or ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/8/10/0847-romance-tattoo If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

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.

Spooky season body horror hatches in “Odd Egg” by Alex Grass, a weird creature-horror story about a carton of free eggs, a smiling stranger, and something impossible waiting inside the final shell. After Roger from the mysterious Keystone Cooperative Growers Association leaves Maryellen a dozen farm-fresh eggs and promises that a god lives inside them, breakfast takes a grotesque turn. Eleven shells are empty. The last produces a tiny human head on six spiderlike legs—and the thing does not stay tiny for long. As it grows, feeds, and changes, Maryellen is pulled into a nightmare of body horror, monstrous metamorphosis, dark comedy, and the coming Time of the Egg.  A perfect ramp-up to Halloween, this narrated horror story is made for listeners seeking scary Halloween stories, spooky stories, weird fiction, creature horror, body horror stories, and offbeat horror narration with a gruesome pulp-monster edge. This episode marks Alex Grass's first appearance on Weekly Spooky. The ebook of Infernal Tramps: Tales of Weird Terror by Alex Grass is available for only 99 cents on Amazon, and is free to read with Kindle Unlimited. You can also find out more at www.infernaltramps.com.

Mergulhe num mar de histórias, assine já o Kindle Unlimited: https://geni.us/MCUF_KU_YT Edu Oliveira e Thiago Theodoro comentam fofocas da internet, dos famosos e da audiência.No ar, toda segunda, quarta (apoiadores) e sexta.Seja um apoiador do podcast: ⁠ https://orelo.cc/meconteumafofoca https://apoia.se/meconteumafofocapodcast Em caso de dúvidas, ou se precisar de ajuda do suporte, escreva para ⁠alo@orelo.cc⁠Conte sua fofoca pra gente: ⁠meconteumafofocapodcast@gmail.com⁠Ei, fofoqueira, conheça nossa lojinha: https://umapenca.com/meconteumafofoca/

Send us Fan MailSuccess is a loaded term. It comes with expectations and targets. It's measured and tracked and is closely tied with a person's worth. Not just their self worth, either. Society isn't interested in the film that doesn't get watched or the book that doesn't get read. They get tossed to one side, relegated to the bottom of the pile, and ignored for the most part. It's easy to get caught up in the benchmarks of success, but what happens when we start creating for the sake of creating? What happens when we make art or create content because we feel inspired to and not worry so much about what comes after? Abandoning all hope of success doesn't mean giving up. It means letting go of the standards set by other people and finding value in yourself and what you produce. My Joints Hurt: A Practical Guide to Navigating Healthcare in a Fat Body is available to purchase on Amazon or read on Kindle Unlimited.Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know!Connect With MeBUY THE BOOK: Never suffer through another through another weight loss lecture from your doctor againJOIN THE NO WEIGH MOVEMENT: Get a free script when you sign upTHE WEIGHTING ROOM: Community with a neurodivergent flavour. **BOOK CLUB** exclusive to Weighting Room members. BOOK A CONSULTATION: For the ultimate transformation in your healthcare journeyEXPLORE THE MASTERCLASS LIBRARY: Become an expert in your condition and the weight inclusive ways to manage itFREE GUIDES:Evidence-based, not diet nonsenseFind me on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

We've been talking about the end (almost end) of this one since we started the podcast, so it seemed high time we did a deep dive on it! Judith McNaught's Perfect is the most 90s thing we've ever read, so gird your loins for both the best all-is-lost scene in romance, and also Zach, Julie, prison breaks, illiteracy, the Coors corporation, Romance Cashmere, and so so many references to Kevin Costner. It's the most 90s thing we've ever read, without question.If you want to talk more about Perfect or Judith McNaught, or about romance in general, come join our Patreon! You'll get an extra monthly episode from us and access to the incredible readers and brilliant people on the Fated Mates Discord. Learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.Our next read along is Sarah's A Rogue By Any Other Name, the first in her casino series. This is one we've gotten a bunch of requests for, and so, it will be our final read along of the season. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.BooksPerfect by Judith McNaughtA Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaughtRemember When by Judith McNaughtDouble Standards by Judith McNaughtTender Triumph by Judith McNaughtNotesJen said Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead but she meant Adventures in Babysitting, which was a 1987 movie where suburban kids go on a terrifying adventure in the terrifying big city of Chicago.We did a deep dive of A Kingdom of Dreams in Season 2.Kelly Faircloth sent Sarah an ad for the book from People Magazine. In print versions of the book, there was a letter from Judith McNaught explaining the literacy plot in the book.Interestingly, the Coors literacy push was covered by the New York Times in 1992, discussing the push by big companies to adopt a cause and use it to burnish their image.Okay, apparently fleece also had a bellwether year in 1993, but let's be honest, it was Old Navy who made performance fleece happen for most of us and that was 1998.In America, our access to Abortion is much worse than it was in 1993 and America still has a devastating epidemic of suicide among queer teenagers, as The Trevor Project explains “LGBTQ+ young people are not inherently prone to suicide risk because of their sexual orientation or gender identity but rather placed at higher risk because of how they are mistreated and stigmatized in society.”SponsorsFrayed Pages by Wattpad Books, publishers of EM Wilson's Breakup for Two, available in print or ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.Meghan Quinn, author of Just for the Plot, available in print, ebook and audiobook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.Kylie Scott, author of Runaway Rockstar, available in print or ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or your local independent bookstore.Emily Andersen, author of the Midnights on the Square series. Available in print or ebook at at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or wherever you get your books.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/7/28/0845-judith-mcnaughts-perfect-content-warning-the-90s If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

Send us Fan MailI pride myself on being a fat person who isn't afraid to take up space. But the more you take up space, the more people will take issue with it. Especially if you're visibly different — Fat, Trans, Queer, Neurodivergent. So I suffered a few setbacks over the past few years and I learned that if I don't censor or filter myself, chances are I would be punished and my words would be used against me. I learned there is a "right way" to do social justice, and if that means hiding parts of myself, then it's worth it for the greater good. Turns out that faking it doesn't work out much better, and liberation can only come when people are free to be themselves. Sounds pretty obvious when you say it out loud, but this wasn't an easy lesson for me to learn. Join me this week as I start taking up space my way, in spite of the potential future backlash. Don't forget that My Joints Hurt: A Practical Guide to Navigating Healthcare in a Fat Body is available to purchase on Amazon or read on Kindle Unlimited.  Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know!Connect With MeBUY THE BOOK: Never suffer through another through another weight loss lecture from your doctor againJOIN THE NO WEIGH MOVEMENT: Get a free script when you sign upTHE WEIGHTING ROOM: Community with a neurodivergent flavour. **BOOK CLUB** exclusive to Weighting Room members. BOOK A CONSULTATION: For the ultimate transformation in your healthcare journeyEXPLORE THE MASTERCLASS LIBRARY: Become an expert in your condition and the weight inclusive ways to manage itFREE GUIDES:Evidence-based, not diet nonsenseFind me on Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

The last few years have brought a wave of romances with magical elements—not really paranormal, not really witches, not really contemporary — books where something is just slightly ✨magic✨. Today, we're talking about those books, how they work, what they're saying, and how they work in terms of character, plot and POV. We're also discussing how the books exist on the outer edges of the romance pool.If you want to talk more about these speculative romance novels, or about romance in general, come join our Patreon! You'll get an extra monthly episode from us and access to the incredible readers and brilliant people on the Fated Mates Discord. Learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.Our next read along is an old school contemporary, Perfect by Judith McNaught. Sarah says it has the greatest all-is-lost moment in romance history. Read it to find out if she's right. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.BooksA Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia WilliamsMy Date with a Pair of Gray Sweatpants by Cassie O. PeiaThe House of Now and Then by Edward UnderhillDo Your Worst by Rosie DananEvery Version of You by Natalie MessierThe Night Island by Jayne Ann KrentzThe Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston The Someday Garden by Ashley PostonLosing Sight by Tati RichardsonStruck Speechless by Tati RichardsonNotesThis year's men's World Cup actually broke the Own Goal record with 14 of them. Get ready for the Women's World Cup in Brazil next year in 2027! So these English fans made up a bunch of chants for a regular player, which is very charming. Speaking of soccer, Mamdani continues to show us all that politicians can just…help make people's lives better?Here's a handout Jen uses to teach the three genres that fall under the speculative fiction umbrella, and why magical realism isn't a catch-all or synonym for any writing with speculative elements.The pink dress question: how do you decide if your characters need to heal themselves in order to fall in love, or if falling in love is what heals them?Matthew Rhys and Matthew Macfadyen are in fact different people, but everyone's watching Widow's Bay.SponsorsLumi Gummies. Go to lumigummies.com and use code FATEDMATES for 30% off your order.Lucy Score author of The Dead Guy Next Door, the first in the Riley Thorn series, available in print, ebook and audiobook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.Harpercollins, publishers of Sleuths, by Samantha Moody, available in print, ebook and audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or your local independent bookstore.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/7/5/s0843 If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

Once upon a time, Sarah went to Sweden and met a thriller writer who likes talking about the rules of writing in genre as much as we do. We're so excited that to be able to bring Anders de la Motte's brilliant thoughts about thrillers and mysteries to Fated Mates in this far-reaching conversation on romance's sister genres—thrillers & mysteries. We talk about Anders's path to writing, about the rules of writing thrillers and mysteries, about the covenant mysteries and thrillers have with readers, and about Mystery Reasons™️. We had the best time with this one — you're going to love it.Learn more about Anders's books at his English language publishers, Simon & Schuster and HarpercollinsIf you want to talk more about Genre Carrying the Myth, Jayne Ann Krentz's genius way of thinking about the work of genre fiction, or about mysteries and thrillers, come join our Patreon! You'll get an extra monthly episode from us and access to the incredible readers and brilliant people on the Fated Mates Discord. Learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.Our next read along is an old school contemporary, Perfect by Judith McNaught. Sarah says it has the greatest all-is-lost moment in romance history. Read it to find out if she's right. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.Thrillers and Mysteries Mentioned in This EpisodeThe Mountain King by Anders De la MotteThe Glass Man by Anders De la MotteThe Rust Forest by Anders De la MotteShutter Island by Denis LehaneThe Usual SuspectsWidow's BayMurder on the Orient Express by Agatha ChristieColumboPoker FaceMurder, She WroteKnives OutThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg LarssonKilling Floor by Lee ChildOrphan X by Gregg HurwitzSmall Mercies by Dennis LehaneThe DaVinci Code by Dan BrownJames BondEvil Under the Sun by Agatha ChristieDeath on the Nile by Agatha ChristieAnd Then There Were None by Agatha ChristieOne of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManusThe Thursday Murder Club by Richard OsmanThe WireMemoRandom by Anders De la MotteEnd of Summer by Anders De la MotteGame by Anders De la MotteNotesWelcome Anders de la Motte, author of mysteries and thrillers. Many of his books have been translated to English, most recently The Asker series.Many of the most famous fictional detectives we mentioned are on this list.In fiction, unreliability is a narrative device meant to purposefully confuse or lie to the reader for the purposes of the story. We've argued that it's more or less impossible to have an unreliable narrator in romance. A good explainer on the difference between close 3rd (used in romance) and limited 3rd (used in mysteries/thrillers)MacGuffins and other mystery and thriller tropes and vocabulary.SponsorsJill Shalvis author of Falling Into You, available in print, ebook, audiobook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local independent bookstore.Jess Turner, author of The Only Catch, available in print, ebook or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.Hachette, publishers of In the Wake of the Ruined, by Kalie Cassidy, available in print, ebook and audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or your local independent bookstore.Oliver Heber Books, publishers of The Forbidden Duke, by Darcy Burke, available in print, ebook and audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books. Support the special 10th...

❤️ Love can feel safe... but is it supposed to heal everything?This week on Life as P..., Phoenix Ash unpacks one of the biggest misconceptions about relationships: that the right partner can magically reset your nervous system.

It's summer, so we're talking Country House Parties! We're skulking around, having scandalous meetings in cupboards, getting caught in the rain near the groundskeeper's cottage, and generally causing chaos during a summer party at an enormous country house where someone is definitely ending up married (or at least ruined). This is another one where we're pretty shocked we haven't done it before. Gird your loins, historical lovers!!If you want to talk more about country house parties, about historicals, or about romance in general, come join our Patreon! You'll get an extra monthly episode from us and access to the incredible readers and brilliant people on the Fated Mates Discord. Learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.Our next read along is an old school contemporary, Perfect by Judith McNaught. Sarah says it has the greatest all-is-lost moment in romance history. Read it to find out if she's right. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.BooksDay of the Duchess by Sarah MacLeanDuchess by Night by Eloisa JamesBand Sinister by KJ CharlesAny Old Diamonds by KJ CharlesHow the Duke was Won by Lenora BellA Dangerous Man by Connie BrockwayForever Your Duke by Erica RidleyDo You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa DareSlightly Dangerous by Mary BaloghWhat I did for a Duke by Julie Ann LongThe Fifth Avenue Rebels Series by Joanna ShupeAgain the Magic by Lisa KleypasNotesIt's officially called The Obama Presidential Center, but you can also call it The Obamalisk OR the Taj Michelle. Whatever works for you! It's a great place for a first date!The tall ships! It's not the St. Charles, but the St. Lawrence waterways, it's manmade, because you know, Niagara Falls. We know geography!Some people got married at Madison Square Garden and some other people got engaged at the top of the Empire State Building.In Tatler, author Lucy Foley wrote about the country house party.Noises Off is a farce.SponsorsRachel Griffiths, author of Just for the Season, available in print, ebook, audiobook from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, signed from the Ripped Bodice, or wherever you get your books.Max Monroe authors of Where I Should Have Been, available in print, ebook, audiobook from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or your local independent bookstore.Kristin Jennings, author of A Legacy of Magic & Monsters, available in print, ebook or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.Union Square & Co., publishers of Pot Shot, by Laura Piper Lee, available in print, ebook and audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or your local independent bookstore.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/7/5/s0842-country-house-parties If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

We are BACK with one of our absolute favorite types of episodes, our Current KU Reads!! These are books that we have recently read and would recommend on Kindle Unlimited. As always we've got everything from romantic suspense, sports romance, summer rom coms + more!! No spoilers for any of these & please let us know if you've read any of these books & what you thought of them!!Books Mentioned :The Highlands & Adair Family series by Samantha YoungWhen a Scot Ties the Knot (Castles Ever After, #3) by Tessa DarePaper Rings (The New Romantics #1) by Brittanee Nicole Not Another Love Song by Julie Soto Whispers in the Water ( Deep River #1) by Nyssa Kathryn Untamed by Luna Mason We Met Like This by Kasie WestIf you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to ⭐ rate and review the show! Your support means the world to us!ACOTAR 6 Midnight release party tickets : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/acotar-6-midnight-release-party-tickets-1985166605757?aff=oddtdtcreatorSpotify playlists: Book Recs: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6tD41GHtHkFhjcZlHBSqSD?si=VlJjVms_Q4eA9YumGmL1CgACOTAR Revisited: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DCtVSQ5BvgGWeoCT4N5zI?si=ew4lglYgTOC7NtRrLsOsJgMaasverse Theory Episodes : https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5cGJssNThPZ6D3m3jtyUMV?si=4EtJ4ISZRM-m-1VGOuJGTg Patreon Instagram TikTok Website

We're back with a deep dive on one of our favorite recent romances, Seven Days in June by Tia Williams! We talk about yearning in contemporaries, about books that have a powerful sense of place, about dual timelines, about secondary characters, about lines that stick with us years later, and about how fated mates works as a trope in a contemporary romance.Tia also has a new book out this month, The Missed Connection. Get it wherever you get your books.Listen to our Season 3 episode with Tia Williams about writers in romance and head over to talk about Seven Days in June or any of her other books on the Fated Mates Discord, accessible to our Patreon subscribers. By joining the Patreon, you meet other Fated Mates listeners and get an extra monthly episode from us. Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.Read Seven Days in June at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, wherever you get your books, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.NotesSorry, we're a Knicks podcast now, everyone. Sarah because of New York and Jen because of Villanova. Sarah did look up that Knickerbocker thing, but we never got back to it. Learn more about how those trousers became a symbol of NYC here. Sports curses are bad, just ask Red Sox fans! Spike Lee has really been through it, Jalen Brunson's interview after the game just shows you a man trying to deal with his feelings.The World Cup, we just don't know anything about that yet, but we're gonna get up to speed on that, just like all the people of the world getting up to speed on America. Also, feels important to romance that we bring you the news that the Tartan Army cleared Boston out of beer.We had Tia Williams on the podcast back in season 3 when Seven Days in June was released. Although there is not a sequel to Seven Days, Shane and Eva are secondary characters in the YA romance with Audre that came out in 2025. Find out more about Tia, and see all her books at her website.Come see Sophia Benoit in conversation with us in NYC (June 23) and Chicago (June 24) to celebrate the release of her first historical romance, The Very Definition of Love.SponsorsFrederick Smith, author of Love is a Contact Sport, available in print, ebook, audiobook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or wherever you get your books.Little Brown & Company, publishers of Lu Chekowsky's Don't Buy What I'm Selling: On Breaking Up with Advertising and Finally Learning to Love My Whole, Fat Self, available in print, ebook, audiobook from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo or wherever you get your books.The What in the Smut? Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.W by Wattpad Books, publishers of Nicole Alfrine's Brain Games. Available in print and ebook from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or wherever you get your books.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/2026/6/16/s0838-seven-days-in-june-by-tia-williams If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

This week, we're visiting with Mary Kay Andrews, a longtime writer and certified badass who we adore for her WTAF Wednesdays and her delightful books. We talk about her writing journey, her decision to get publicly, vocally political, and about her new book Road Trip. We had a great time chatting and talking about writing, about research, and about how we should all just take a road trip through Ireland. Of course, we recommend a few books!Find Mary Kay Andrews (and catch WTAF Wednesdays) on Instagram, Threads, or her website.Listen to our earlier romance road trip episode from Season 1 and head over to tell us all about your favorite road trips and find an endless list of road trip recs on the Fated Mates Discord, accessible to our Patreon subscribers. By joining the Patreon, you meet other Fated Mates listeners and get an extra monthly episode from us. Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.Next week, our read along is Seven Days in June by Tia Williams. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, wherever you get your books, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.Books DiscussedRoad Trip by Mary Kay AndrewsSummers at the Saint by Mary Kay AndrewsThis Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona AndrewsNevermind the Mistletoe by Louisa DarlingThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark TwainThe Odyssey, Emily Wilson's TranslationThe Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise by Colleen OakleyThis Tender Land by William Kent KruegerThe Road to Tender Hearts by Annie HartnettSponsorsEdward Underhill, author of The House of Now & Then, available in print, ebook, audiobook from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or wherever you get your books.Kristina Forrest, author of The Summer Girlfriend, available for preorder in print, ebook, audiobook from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo or wherever you get your books.Little Brown & Co, publishers of Emily Adrian's Seduction Theory. Available in print, ebook and audiobook from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, wherever you get your books, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.Lumi Gummies. Go to lumigummies.com and use code FATEDMATES for 30% off your order.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/6/9/s0837-road-trips-with-mary-kay-andrews If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.