Podcasts about Penguin

Boomer potheads causing a stink for their neighbors :: Smoking in public talk :: Ricky has a problem with non-smokers :: Is it racist to say black people smoke menthols? :: Big Beautiful Bill regulated THC drinks :: Penguin says curry stinks... racist?? :: NO CREAMY GARLIC NOODLES FOR PENGUIN! :: Which states have fewer women? :: Nihilism, taking your dog for a walk and what to do with your life :: Meta paying $18 billion to these 48 states :: Lazy parents say "paren my kid for me" :: David crashes out :: 2026-08-30 :: Hosts: Bonnie, Kahuna, Penguin, Mark Edge

For 20 years Maggie and Will have spent idyllic summers in the south of France with their friends Lydia and Roland. This year though, tension is brewing and loyalties are being tested. Their young kids are all there too, and they might end up stumbling upon secrets that were being kept from them...August's Happy Place Book Club read is Family Friends. In this chat with Fearne, author Chloe Ashby explains why she wanted to explore relationship dynamics around the age of 40. Each character has brought a bit of extra baggage to this year's holiday, so through them Chloe wonders at what point doing one bad thing makes you a bad person.Plus, why was it controversial to include a teenage holiday romance?Thank you to Penguin for the use of the Family Friends audiobook, narrated by Sally Scott.If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:Book Club Meets: Candice Carty-WilliamsBook Club Meets: Caro Claire BurkeBook Club Meets: Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

...  I got the power back on eventually with the help of DWP's Finest, Joaquin de Artola, who also happens to be the brother of the Penguin of Troy, Alicia de Artola!!! ... Enjoy the What's Bruin Show Network!Multiple shows to entertain you on one feed:Support WBS at Patreon.com/WhatsBruinShow for just $2/month and get exclusive content and access to our SLACK channel.Twitter/X: @whatsbruinshow        Instagram: @whatsbruinshowCall the What's Bruin Network Hotline at 805-399-4WBS (Suck it Reign of Troy)We are also on YouTube HEREGet Your WBSN MERCH - Go to our MyLocker Site by Clicking HEREWhat's Bruin Show- A conversation about all things Bruin over drinks with Bruin Report Online's @mikeregaladoLA, @wbjake68 and friends!Subscribe to the What's Bruin Show at whatsbruin.substack.comEmail us at: whatsbruinshow@gmail.comTweet us at: @whatsbruinshowWest Coast Bias - LA Sports (mostly Lakers, Dodgers and NFL) with Jamaal and JakeSubscribe to West Coast Bias at wbwestcoastbias.substack.comEmail us at: WB.westcoastbias@gmail.comTweet us at: @WBwestcoastbiasThe BEAR Minimum - Jake and his Daughter Megan talk about student life and Cal Sports during her first year attending UC Berkeley.Subscribe to The BEAR Minimum at thebearminimum.substack.comEmail us at: wb.bearminimum@gmail.comTweet us at: @WB_BearMinimumPlease rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on.

Welcome to Multiverse News, your source for information about all your favorite fictional universes.Marvel left D23 with a full X-Men cast, a Doomsday sizzle reel, and a VisionQuest trailer, but not one new Disney+ series. In the August 20 edition of What I'm Hearing, Puck's Julia Alexander wrote that multiple live-action Marvel series are quietly in development with announcements expected soon, which cuts directly against the last few weeks of reporting that had Marvel retreating from live-action TV entirely after VisionQuest lands October 14. Worth stressing that this is a single paywalled item with no titles, no dates, and no talent attached, and Variety, Deadline, and THR have all left it alone while the aggregators and fan sites ran wild with it, loudly, with everything from a Heroes for Hire spinoff to a Defenders reunion getting floated ahead of Marvel Television's New York Comic Con panel on October 8. While Marvel's TV plans stay stuck in rumor, DC just made one official. The Jimmy Olsen project we've been tracking for the better part of a year finally has a title, and it's The People v. Gorilla Grodd, now an eight-episode straight-to-series order at HBO Max. Jimmy Tatro is officially Grodd after months of being merely attached in reports, but the bigger get is how much of the Daily Planet came along, with Skyler Gisondo, Beck Bennett, Mikaela Hoover, and Wendell Pierce all reprising from Superman for a “true” crime docuseries reinvestigating Grodd's murder conviction. To close out our all-TV episode, here's the one DC show that actually made it to air, and it's doing numbers. Per Deadline, Lanterns pulled 9.3 million global viewers in its first three days across HBO and HBO Max, 6.6 million of them stateside, making it the biggest DC Studios premiere in HBO Max history and a top five series debut on the platform overall. That's a stronger opening than The Penguin and IT: Welcome to Derry, and the premiere has held the number one spot on HBO Max's daily top ten every day since Sunday, with Chris Mundy already sketching season two despite no official renewal yet. Kit Harington will play Gilderoy Lockhart in season 2 of HBO's Harry Potter series. Harington replaces Nicholas Hoult, who was originally cast in the role but left over scheduling issues.Spider-Man: Brand New Day continued its dominant run at the global box office and currently stands at $2.2 billion worldwide. The Odyssey opened in a few more territories and sits at $1.44 billion in its sixth weekend, while newcomer Insidious: Out of the Further opened to $60.3 million worldwide.In an interview at the For the Love of Fantasy & Sci-Fi convention in London, Hayley Atwell told attendees that she was frustrated by Captain Carter's storyline in 2022's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness saying “If I'm really like brutally honest, I was so disappointed with how they positioned her and what happened to her in that scene. It's so small, and she gets frisbeed to death. I tried on set to kind of go, ‘Can I just add? Can I just suggest?' And they were like, ‘Sure, but no.'”FX has ordered Legends, a meta-thriller limited series spinoff of Sons of Anarchy that reunites the majority of the original cast, including Charlie Hunnam, only this time playing fictionalized versions of themselves. The logline has the cast reuniting at a fan convention after more than a decade, where the line between life and art blurs as the fractured brotherhood faces a real-world threat more dangerous than anything from the show.NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal in an interview with EW revealed that he attempted to get cast in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a role but was told no. He said “I wanted to be in the ‘Avengers' and they were like, ‘Shaq, we fuckin' love you and we'd love to put you in, but if your face pops up on screen people are going to go, ‘Hey, that's Shaq!' He said it truthfully, and I was like, alright… I guess my face is too bigtime.”

"Automated Paradise" The Bristol-born Jon Klein got his start with the late-seventies post-punk outfit Europeans. After their break-up he formed the porto-goth band Specimen, who put out a handful of winning singles, but splintered before an album could be released. In 1987 Klein joined Siouxsie and the Banshees and went on to record three records with them: Peepshow, Superstition and The Rapture. Although Klein left the band in 1994, from there he moved from strength to strength, playing and recording with Shriekbak, Thomas Dolby, Talvin Singh and Space Tribe. He toured with Sinead O'Connor as her lead guitarist in 1995 and he played everywhere from Pinkpop to Glastonbury to Lollapalooza. Klein is one of those guys who has always stayed busy: he played in the band SNAIL, toured Southeast Asia as the musical director for Dr. Penguin's Magic Circus, went to art school and knocked out a degree in Fine Art and Critical Theory, has his own production company called Ground Control, co- produced an album for Fangoria, which hit Number One in Spain, composed soundtracks for film and theatre companies and played in the supergroup, Spammed with Horace Panter, Rat Scabies and Terry Edwards. He's also a filmmaker, an international fine artist and he is a member of the Tuned In Community Music Project with Jah Wobble. Klein and Jah Wobble have put out several fabulous albums, including A Brief History of Now and their latest effort, Automated Paradise. A jittery blast of searing post-punk and cultural dread, Automated Paradise finds Klein in fine form, slashing brilliantly away through each composition with fiery resolve. www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com (http://www.stereoembersmagazine.com) www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) IG + BLUESKY + THREADS: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com

For writer Richard Flanagan, the political belief that white Australians do not belong in this land is wrong and it's damaging any progress we might hope to make as a collective people.Richard has spent the last 30 years writing award-winning pieces of fiction and non-fiction, tackling the climate crisis, the meaning of art, free speech and the stubborn necessity of hope.Threaded through all of Richard's writing is a contempt for power and its acolytes, and a great tenderness for human struggle and goodness.Richard says that while writing novels is an introspective process, and journalistic writing is very much outward-looking, they share the same fundamental purpose - telling the truth.His latest book is a collection of speeches and opinion pieces that assembled in order to contextualise and define the rest of his oeuvre as fiercely Australian.Because Richard says the story Australia tells itself as a nation must change, to include all of us as profoundly belonging to its land and history.For Richard, the political belief that white Australians do not belong in this land is wrong and it's damaging any progress we might hope to make as a collective people.Heresies is published by Penguin.This episode of Conversations was recorded live at the Byron Writers Festival in August 2026. It was produced by Jennifer Leake. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.It explores white history, black history, Australian history, Indigenous, non-Indigenous, Aboriginal Australia, writing, books, politics, climate crisis, black arm band view of history, colonialism, settlers, invasion, national identity, bushfires, natural disasters, early onset dementia, incorrect medical diagnosis, monoculture, multiculturalism, One Nation, fedpols, federal politics, Pauline Hanson, First Nations identity, the Voice Referendum.To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you'll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

David Newell has grown up on screen in the Penguin Live Lectures, traveled as a part of a successful comedy magic double act, and now he's one of the resident magicians at one of the premier venues in the world for showcasing close-up magic. He's a fast rising star in the magic world, and he shares his experiences on this week's show. At the end of the show Erik gives a brief recap of Magic Live 2026 and discusses a new social feature on the Penguin Website.

Mark hears from state rep Michael Granger that the NH House is working on legislation to reaffirm that Flock cameras are illegal :: The gov wants the rules to be confusing so they can more easily go after you :: Mark has questions about gayness for Penguin :: Why are there no tops? ::

Ben & Bob catch up for a conversation about bad Ai textooks, new discoveries about precolonial American societies and a new take on the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Make sure to catch Bob at his endless book tour for America's Founding Son! Dates available by following him on Instagram at @bobcrawfordbass. Sources discussed in this episode: ·      Adi Schane, "'Venecky' instead of Kentucky," WDRB.com, July 29, 2026. ·      John Green, Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of our Deadliest Infection, (Penguin, 2025). ·      Pärssinen, M., Kalliola, R., Ranzi, A. et al. "Over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in the Southwest Amazonia."Nature (2026).   This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.

Mark hears from state rep Michael Granger that the NH House is working on legislation to reaffirm that Flock cameras are illegal :: The gov wants the rules to be confusing so they can more easily go after you :: Mark has questions about gayness for Penguin :: Why are there no tops? ::

One of magic's most creative minds, Dan Harlan, joins us this week. No doubt many of you have his “Card Toon” card trick or have watched him on Penguin Live videos or perhaps on the Tarbell Course of Magic on video. Maybe you once subscribed to The Minotaur which he co-published with Marv Leventhal. His life and career hasn't all been roses and indeed had many bumps along the way. Currently he hosts MagiCon - The Mystic Tower convention in Raleigh, North Carolina plus he continues to create and perform. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize Dan Harlan is quite candid about his successes and shortcomings as he openly shares many stories in this week's episode. We learn that Dan doesn't like card tricks and he tells us why. He also reveals a long time secret that Majoke was co-authored by him and Scott Alexander. He talks about the time it took to create and film “Every Trick in the Book” of Tarbell. Dan also tells us about his years with Penguin and other creative projects that hold his attention. Cosmic Thinker Scott Wells with Dan Harlan Download Download this podcast in an MP3 file by Clicking Here and then right click to save the file. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by Clicking Here. You can download or listen to the podcast through Pandora and SiriusXM (formerly Stitcher) by Clicking Here or through FeedPress by Clicking Here or through Tunein.com by Clicking Here or through iHeart Radio by Clicking Here. If you have a Spotify account, then you can also hear us through that app, too. You can also listen through your Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices. Remember, you can download it through the iTunes store, too. See the preview page by Clicking Here.

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.

Welcome to the latest episode of The DWP Echo Chamber!! In this edition, James and Michele talk about The Maltese Penguin by Robert Shearman, a bonus from Big Finish released in July 2002 (not November, as Big Finish say on their website!) and is number thirty three and a half in Big Finish’s Main Range! Listening instructions are very straightforward – Buy The Maltese Penguin from Big Finish Productions for just a few pounds (if you don’t own it already of course!) Listen to it! Join us in the Echo Chamber, listen to what we thought and join in the discussion! Enjoy the show!

Mary Li was a star ballerina when she fell in love with her dance partner Li Cunxin.  When their daughter Sophie was born profoundly deaf, Mary walked away from dance for many years.Mary says she was the least likely girl to grow up to be a ballerina,She grew up in a family of eight kids in the rough and tumble of the Queensland country town of Rockhampton.But in a little timber hall, with cattle trains rolling by outside, Mary discovered a talent for dance.That talent, and a huge amount of hard work and family support took her to the Royal Ballet School in London at sixteen.She then became the principal dancer with the London Festival Ballet, then the Houston ballet.There in Houston Mary fell in love with her dance partner Li Cunxin.Li had also come a long way from his home in rural China, defecting to the U.S. as an adult and then becoming an internationally celebrated dancer.In Houston Li and Mary married and had their first child, a beautiful daughter named Sophie.But when Sophie was 16 months old their lives were turned upside down.This episode was first broadcast in 2020Further informationMary's Last Dance is published by Penguin

In this episode, Noor shares the moment the world told her she was too early for manifestation. Then too late. And why she said f*ck that to both. In 2017, Noor was pitching to press about manifestation and getting the same answer everywhere: you're too early, nobody gets it yet. Fast forward to her third book, You Are a F*cking Success, published with Penguin — a publisher she'd had on her vision board since that same year. The dream had come true. Except Penguin didn't get her a single piece of press. Not one podcast, article, or radio show. The reason? Manifestation is done. Everyone's bored of it. First too early. Now too late. The book still came in at number 11, missing the Sunday Times list by just 300 book sales. Noor knows exactly what one piece of press can do — with her first book, an interview on BBC Radio London led to Steve Wright pulling his car over on the way home to get her on his show. Millions of listeners. The book shot up the charts overnight. One piece of press was all it took. Noor often says she'll be talking about manifestation on a Zimmer frame with her teeth out if she has to, because she's just getting started. The Three Pillars Noor breaks manifestation down like building a dream house — an analogy close to her heart, because building her own dream home is one of her greatest manifestations. Vision Architecture — Most people hand the universe a child's drawing and wonder why nothing comes back. Vision architecture means getting specific about what you want, why you want it, and whether it's what your soul actually wants — not just what your ego thinks will make you look good. Identity Infrastructure — The subconscious mind runs 95% of everything you do. You can have the most beautiful blueprint in the world, but without the right foundations, the house cannot stand. You have to have the capacity to hold what you're calling in. Action — The universe helps, but you're the one laying the bricks. An acorn is blueprinted to become an oak tree. But without sun, soil, and water, it stays an acorn. Humans need vision, identity, and action in the same way. Without all three, potential stays potential. You are never too early or too late to change your life. Follow your purpose, use the process, and keep going anyway.

Episode 320 – Dirty Mackin'

Episode 320 – Dirty Mackin'

How can content marketing in a tight niche build the audience that launches your book? And how do you decide whether to hand your self-published bestseller to a traditional publisher. Suzanne Smith shares what she learned in four years of going from blog to book deal. In the intro, how to stand out as a writer in the age of AI [Nathan Barry Show; Interview with Nathan Barry]; thoughts on asset maintenance; Goodreads giveaway on Bones of the Deep (Aug 5-20, 2026) This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Suzanne Smith is the founder of The Independent Landlord, and the bestselling author of The Good Landlord Handbook. 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 a free blog in a tight niche built the audience for the book Rewriting the book from scratch when the law changed Why speed made self-publishing the only option Building a paid membership after one audience member asked for it Negotiating a Penguin Random House deal with no agent Using AI as a business sidekick, with a control room and an engine room You can find Suzanne at TheIndependentLandlord.com. Transcript of the interview with Suzanne Smith Jo: Suzanne Smith is the founder of The Independent Landlord, and the bestselling author of The Good Landlord Handbook. So welcome to the show, Suzanne. Suzanne: Thank you. Jo: Oh, there's so much to talk about today. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and your background, and how you got into property and writing after a legal career. Suzanne: Well, I've always loved reading books. In fact, I recently did a French literature degree as a mature student. Being an author was never in the game plan at all. It's not something that I even thought about. I was brought up in New Zealand, so shout out to all the Kiwis and those across the pond in Australia. The thing about it is, Jo, you've lived there yourself. Kiwis are independent, self-reliant and have this great sense of fair play. So that was a very formative experience for me. We moved back to England when I was 16, and I have become thoroughly anglicised since then, but a Kiwi at heart. I always wanted to become a lawyer. New Zealand in some ways on television is quite American, and there was this American programme called The Paper Chase. It was about all of these students at Harvard studying law, and the professor said, “You come here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.” I thought, “Oh, I like the sound of that.” I didn't really know what a lawyer was, but everyone seemed to be very happy that I wanted to become one, and then that was it. Jo: So you went into law, and then how did you get into property? Suzanne: So I worked for 25 years as a solicitor. That's like an attorney if you're American. Started off in a law firm, and then I went into pharmaceuticals and I worked for big companies like what is now GSK, GlaxoSmithKline, and small companies as well. When I started out, it was before the internet, before Google. When you're in house, you're very much a generalist. You do a bit of everything. So you help companies grow their business. You're not business prevention, but you're still bound by the code of conduct for solicitors. You've got this role of keeping the company on the right side of the law. Then I had twins, who were born about five years after I became a lawyer, and I decided to work part-time for a while and did an MBA when they were little, part-time through the Open University. I know Jonathan is doing one at the moment. Jo: Yes. He's finished, so that's exciting. Suzanne: That was transformational for me, because I had probably been thinking a bit too much as a lawyer, and it helped me to broaden my view of the world and understand all sorts of things. Sso I continued going up the greasy pole, and then for my last job, in 2015, I joined a biotech company in Cambridge, England, as general counsel and company secretary. It was a long way from home, about two, three hours' drive from home. So I decided to buy a flat, an apartment, and to stay there in the week. I thought to myself, “Well, when I leave this company, I can let it out as a buy-to-let,” but actually as a landlord. So I stayed there for five years, and then when I left, I let out the property. The reason why I decided to leave law after 25 years, I had what I call a sliding doors moment, like in the film. I was 50. I was on holiday with my husband, and we'd probably had one too many rum cocktails. And he said to me, “Well, what do you want to be doing with your life? What would you do if you could do anything?” I was thinking, “Well, I've done law. I want to do something else now.” I didn't really know what that was, and I'd always been thinking about studying French properly, and that's when I left. So I decided, 18 months later, I left to do a French degree at King's College London, full-time. I was the only old person there with lots of 18-year-olds. When I did that, I was able to cash in my share options because I was a good leaver. I retired, and so I started buying properties to let out and became a landlord, without really thinking too much about it, and I used letting agents. They were fine to begin with, but I didn't really have a game plan or anything like that. What I realised is that when I tried to research things online, I couldn't really find anything that was terribly helpful. It was either quite general or it was very legal. So after a while… I became a landlord in 2019. I had the idea, why don't I set up a blog? And this is August 2022, so just four years ago. My husband came up with the idea of the name, The Independent Landlord, because it's that Kiwi spirit, being very independent. I thought, “Right, I'm not going to charge anyone for it. It's a hobby. It's not a business. I'm going to pay it forward and help, use my legal training, practical legal approach, and practical common sense, by doing this blog.” Almost exactly four years ago, I sent my first newsletter to 13 people. Jo: Woo-hoo. Suzanne: And I sent one last week to over 18,000. So it's been quite a journey. Jo: Wow, this is so great. I love this. There's so much in there. The turning 50 and then doing a degree. My master's in death is a little different to your French literature, but I like it. So I love this, and buying properties, starting it on the side, not a business at first, and growing the audience, and obviously you've put so much work in. Then you decide to write a book. So talk about that, because an online blog, although I'm sure your articles and everything were super useful, it's very different to write a blog than a book. So talk about your challenges in writing. Why did you decide to do a book in the first place? Suzanne: Again, I was an accidental landlord, is what they call it when you let a property when you didn't intend to buy it as a buy-to-let, which I did with my Cambridge flat. And I became, in many respects, an accidental author. So I was having a conversation with my husband again and I was saying I'd done this lead magnet to get people to sign up to my newsletter, and a big new law was going through Parliament at the time, called the Renters Reform Bill, that was going to completely transform the way landlords operate. I was saying to my husband, “Oh, I need to update my lead magnet, a little ebook, to explain the new law.” He looked at me and said, “Well, why don't you do a proper book? Write a book.” This was on the 29th of September, 2023. The reason why I mention that is that I thought, “Wow, what a great idea,” and my head was bursting. I went onto Google, and guess what I downloaded on the 1st of October? Jo: My blueprint? Suzanne: Exactly. I found you immediately, the Author Blueprint, and I downloaded it. I checked: on the 1st of October, 2023. Then I listened to almost… well, I think I went back several years on your podcast, just trying to understand. I'm like that. When I try and do something, I just try and learn everything that there is to know about it. So I started writing the book, and I guess the first challenge was I write quickly, and I'm used to writing for people who aren't lawyers, being in-house. So I thought I needed to have a structure. The structure was easy in many respects because, a bit of business at the end, and then you can go through a tenancy. I thought it was important to have a narrative thread all the way through it, just to bring it together. This is the literature degree coming in here. I thought that the mission for everything I do, the reason why I started doing this, is to help landlords, but also to help the experience of renting that people have in England. It's very specific for English law. And to help improve the private rented sector. So that's why I originally set up my blog for free, and I wanted, when people went onto Google, they could find something sensible and very detailed from me. My blog posts were… Well, I've now got over 400,000 words on my blog, so it's a substantial piece of work that is out there free of charge. So what I decided to do was to bring this narrative thread, I call it the good landlord ethos, to the book. Then I wrote very quickly, and I had a pretty good draft by April 2024, because we were all thinking that the law was going to change very soon. But then there was an election, and in the end the government changed and the legislation changed completely, so I had to rewrite the book and start again. So I think that my biggest challenge was that my subject matter, the new law, changed. Because I wanted to publish this book that explained to people practically what they have to do, and make it really straightforward, keeping out of politics, because it is a very politically charged area. I wanted to write it so it's a manual, somebody could literally follow it. So I used an editor, and I did write the book twice. I had a beta reader who is another lawyer, and a landlord as well. Then I got to the get-the-damn-thing-done stage. The really tedious bit of all the typos at the end. Jo: Yes, the finishing energy to get it out there. So at that point, obviously you'd found my blueprint, so you were learning about the indie way of doing things. Did you always decide to self-publish? How did you think about publishing? What were your challenges in publishing? Suzanne: It never occurred to me not to self-publish, because the new law came into effect on the 1st of May, 2026. The law and the details that I needed for the book were finalised in January, and I published on Amazon on the 5th of March, so I had to go so quickly. Even though I'd got a lot of it written, the last bit came in January, and so I needed speed. I knew that for landlords to be able to have something that they can use straightaway to help get them ready for it, and then use as a manual afterwards, I had to be first. Jo: Sorry, just on the year. Was it '24? You said '26. You meant May— Suzanne: 2024? No, no, because I actually published it this year. What happened in 2024, I had the first draft ready, but then I had to do another draft because the law changed when the Labour government came in. Jo: Right. Suzanne: The Renters Reform Bill turned into the Renters' Rights Bill. So I had to rewrite the book. So I finished however many drafts at the end of January 2026. Then it went to an editor, et cetera, et cetera, and I managed to get the book ready for a proof, to get the proof printed, towards the end of February. So it was really quick to go from the law being sufficiently finalised for me to write a book in January, and then having it ready in just over a month. There is no way that I could have done that if I'd gone to a traditional publisher. It didn't even occur to me to go, because I didn't want to be going touting around my book and, “Please publish me,” et cetera. It's just not me. I'm the independent landlord, and that moved very easily to being the independent publisher. So I learnt how to do all the publishing. And a huge thanks: I joined your Patreon and I was a very good student. I went through everything systematically and followed your playbook, and used Vellum and BookFunnel and all the other tools. So I decided to go on Amazon as well as have my own Shopify store, which just about killed me. Jo: I was going to say, you are an excellent student. You really like learning, but you also put this into practice, which is why I also wanted to talk to you. You haven't just talked about all this. You've literally done everything. Suzanne: Sometimes it was like my head was going to burst. Luckily, Claude upped his game earlier this year when we got the Opus 4.5. I didn't use AI really until this year. I decided I need to do exercise all the time, and have that as a have-to-do, because my head was spinning all the time with all these different things. So I would go to the gym, go to a spin class, and then I would walk out with my phone on, with the Claude app, and dictate a stream of consciousness into it. “Oh, I need to do this, or what about that? Oh, I just remembered about this. Oh, I've had this idea, blah.” And then said, “Make sense of it for me, Claude.” So it was very much as a thinking partner, because when you're writing your first book, it's bad enough, but when you're learning how to publish… Even, like, when I got the first proof of the book back from BookVault, I realised that all the footnotes—I have 114 footnotes in my book, and that, again, is the recent degree there—and the formatting had gone skew-whiff. Apparently it was an issue with Vellum, and they were really lovely and they sorted it straight out for me. So it shows: always get a proof of the book. They were able to sort that out very quickly, and BookVault were very quick in getting me another proof, because you can shortcut it and just pay to get a very quick delivery. Amazon, on the other hand, was really slow. It took a week. So I actually published earlier on my Shopify store for my members, of my membership, and I gave them a discount. Then I finally got it onto Amazon on the 5th of March. There are all these different skills you're having to learn. The Shopify store I found very hard, and there was all the tax, because I'm VAT registered. So I think I'm still recovering. Jo: You're still recovering. I wouldn't normally recommend a Shopify store for someone with their first book, doing first of everything. But, as you say, you're someone who learns a lot, puts it into practice, and— I think you were pretty determined to do that because you had a community as well, right? Suzanne: Exactly, yes. The big subscriber list. I think that's why the book did so well. So in the first week, because I met you at the Indie Author Lab put on by— Jo: Yes, London Book Fair, yes. Suzanne: Yes, the Alliance of Independent Authors. I met you there, and it was just my first week, and I had 1,000 sales in the first week. That was because of my audience. I'd been going on about the fact that I'm writing this book for two and a half years, because that's how long it took me to do. So I had a wait list for it, and I had a thing on my website, a landing page on my website, saying how good the book was and why it's the best thing for the Renters' Rights Act. Then I went onto Google, and I think I sent you a screenshot of this at the time. I put into Google, “What's the best book for the Renters' Rights Act for landlords in England?” And it came up with me as a featured snippet, and I hadn't even published it at that time. It was just about there. So the blog really helped, because I'd become an authority on the Renters' Rights Act. Even though I'm not a practising solicitor any more, I spent all my time reading the damn thing, and it is a very complicated bit of legislation. Funnily enough, I have ruffled a lot of feathers. People have even said about me behind my back, “What does she know? She's only got four properties.” But I just took no notice. I thought, “I'm going to try and use my legal brain and my understanding of what it's like being a landlord, there with the rubber gloves cleaning an oven when people have moved out, and try and write something that's not trying to sell anything else, and to help people.” And then it got picked up. Jo: Yes. Wait, let's just slow down. Slow down, because we will get onto that in a minute. But let's just come back to that launch. So as we talked about, you've had a blog for five years— Suzanne: It was three and a half by then. Jo: Three and a half years you've been blogging, but hundreds of thousands of words of useful information. So you've essentially done content marketing. You've attracted people. You had a lead magnet. You got them on your email list. You told them that you were writing a book. You got a sort of pre-sales list up. So that's an email list. You've got a blog. Did you do anything else in terms of marketing? Suzanne: I had YouTube, a big YouTube channel. I'd only set it up at the end of 2024, and I'd had half a million views. And again, just very straightforward advice, and without all the scaremongering and politics. I deliberately keep out of it all. A lot of people joined my newsletter as a result of that. Also a year ago, exactly today, I was running a Facebook group, which was a lot of hard work. There were a few thousand people in it, but there are often a lot of people going in there trying to sell things: insurance, eviction specialists and things. And there was also a lot of people just being unpleasant to other people. I was getting fed up with it. It was taking me a lot of time, and I was doing a lot of speaking events and trying to explain what this new law was doing, and wearing myself out. I'm an extrovert, but even I find speaking events absolutely exhausting, because it's like everything gets sucked out of you. It's strange. Then somebody came up to me in July last year and said, “Suzanne, can you set up a membership?” I said, “Well, landlords aren't going to pay for that.” And they said, “Yes, they will. You build it and they will come.” I asked ChatGPT and thought about it. I asked ChatGPT, who I was dating at the time, now exclusively with Claude, but I know Claude has other people in his life. But I'm very much set with Claude Fable at the moment. So I asked ChatGPT, how can I go about setting up a membership? And I mentioned your one and said, “Should I do it on Patreon?” And then he came back with: go for Circle. So I set up a membership on Circle, exactly a year ago. In fact, it's the anniversary of my first member yesterday. hTe rules I had were, no selling. So I don't sell, no affiliate links, no one else can sell anything, and we have to be supportive. No negativity, no politics. So what it's become, it's like the senior common room of the private rented sector, with landlords, lawyers, letting agents. There's a fantastic forum in there. It's not me doing it, it's peer-to-peer. I have twice-monthly live streams where people can ask me questions. I wonder where I got that from. No, I very much modelled it on your Patreon, but on a different platform. I have courses in there as well. So that has really grown. I launched it in July, and by September, October, I'd gone past the VAT threshold, which has complicated everything, but it means my business now is this membership. I really enjoy doing it, and there hasn't been all the negativity that you have in a Facebook group. So I had them as… talk about your thousand fans. There are about 1,500 in the membership, and their support really helped the launch of my book, as well as the wider people who get my free newsletter. Jo: Yes. Suzanne: So it's all different types of content marketing. Jo: Y, but I do love this. And of course, if people are wondering, I joined Patreon back in 2014, I think it might have even been before that, and there weren't too many places back then to run communities. It wasn't even really a community at the time, it was a sort of, almost a “give me a bit of support for the podcast.” So things have changed a lot in terms of communities, and obviously you went with Circle, which is great. Patreon is slightly different now, and some people are using Substack for something similar. So that's just on the platform, but on the business: early on in our conversation you said, “I wasn't going to have a business. It wasn't a business. It was just putting stuff out there, helping other people,” and then your audience asked for this membership. And so now it is a business, right? Suzanne: Yes, it is. Jo: And you've got a book and all of this. So are you happy with the change to a business? Because obviously you have to treat it quite differently. Suzanne: Yes, I am, because I think to begin with, I was just doing it one or two days a week. I was actually studying a master's in French literature part-time, and I then found that I was enjoying the blog more than the master's, so I dumped the master's after the first year. But after getting 88% for one of my dissertations, which interestingly was on the translation of a Simone de Beauvoir book into English, and the publisher who's got that now is Random House, but that's another thing. Anyway, so I decided to give up my master's and double down and work full-time on the blog. People were paying to help me with all the big fees and things, the big tech stack, Buy Me a Coffee. I was doing a little bit of consulting and things. I was working six, seven days a week. I was treating it like a business in terms of quality and my effort, but it wasn't a business in terms of revenue. Then it just all came together, and this person said, “Set up a membership,” and I thought, “That's what I'm going to do. I'm now going to put it on a business setting.” I've got an MBA, I know how to do it, and people thought I planned it, but I didn't. It just happened. So now I do very much treat it as a business, but I still don't advertise. I don't allow people to advertise with me, because I want to be independent. If I recommend something, I want people to believe it's me recommending it, not just because someone's paying me, which can be a big issue in the landlord area. Jo: Oh, in any industry. I get pitched every day with loads of random things that people are like, “Oh, a dollar a click or whatever, if you send this to your list.” And it's like, seriously? Just stop it already. I did just want to add there: somebody asked you, they said, “You should have a community,” and that sparked that idea. I just wanted to acknowledge that my Patreon came from Jim Kukral. Some of you will remember, who've been around a long time. Jim Kukral came on my blog around sort of 2013. Amanda Palmer had just put out a book called The Art of Asking, and I was doing a lot of unpaid work on the podcast at the time, and I was either going to give it up or I had to fund it somehow. Jim said, “You should do a Patreon.” And I was like, “Oh, no, I hate asking for money.” So at the time I just felt, oh, weird. Then I was like, “No, I do all this work,” as you were saying. Now the Patreon has changed so much in terms of what it is, but it is the backbone of my business, too. So I love that you listened to one of your fans who said what they wanted, and I love that I've listened as well. Sometimes we just have to listen to those urges, don't we, to take things on? Suzanne: Yes, absolutely. In some ways I didn't really back myself before. I thought, “No one's going to pay for this.” Then the more you give, the more they want. Jo: Yes. Suzanne: What I've been really working on now is having boundaries, because there were two big kind of mottos that I picked up when I was working in pharmaceuticals. One was from a head of the business. He was Canadian, and he was always saying, “You've got to skate to where the puck is heading.” Jo: That's Wayne Gretzky, is it? Suzanne: Exactly. Yes. He would always say it, and so that's what I've done with my blog and my book. When I write things, I don't pay for any tools. I don't do keyword searches and all that. I just think, I do one blog post per topic, and I'm going to guess what people are going to be searching for soon, and I build up all this content around it. That's why most of my blog pages are top five. I've had no advertising. I haven't asked for any backlinks. I don't do it. People backlink to it because it's useful. So that was the first thing, is skate to where the puck is heading, and that was my approach with the book. I knew people would need this book from around May, and they'll need it forever, because it is so complicated and regulated, the rules for being a landlord in England. So that was the first one. The second thing was: when you take something on, you've got to let something go. One in, one out. I found that I was taking on so many different things, and I've just been cutting back, because I can't be doing all the speaking, I can't be answering people's emails. So I now don't do emails. If people want my advice on something, they ask me in the hub, at the twice-monthly live streams. Sometimes I answer in the forums, but I don't have time. When there are 2.4 million landlords in the UK, and even with our 18,000 on my newsletter, I could spend, and I did, I used to spend all my time replying to emails. So anyway, there are the things. Oh, and there was a third one, which is: attract, don't chase. One of my friends gave me that advice and that's exactly what my approach has been. I just don't chase for anything. I just put the stuff there and then build it and they will come. Jo: Yes, and I think another thing is the power of the niche. It's so clear that what you write about, the people you are aiming at, you have an extremely tight target market. That is both a strength and obviously a weakness, because they're the only people. But as you say, there's more than enough of those people for a community, for the book you have. From my own perspective, that's the same for me, the power of the niche. That's how I have a successful podcast, for example, because of that reason. I think you're like a poster child of what a non-fiction author should do. What I like is that you didn't go, “Oh, where's a niche where I could make money?” and then jump in. You've gone about this in a kind of slightly accidental way, but now you're leaning in and this uses all your skills. So this really is a great example of the power of the niche and then making the most of it. But let's move on to what then happened, and— What happened with the book deal? Suzanne: Wow. So you and I met each other on whatever day that was in March at the Indie Author Lab, and the following day I got an email, via my website on a contact form, from Penguin Random House saying, “We love the book. We love the mission, its values,” all this kind of thing. And I was thinking, “Oh, it's another one of those. Must be an—” Jo: AI spam bot, right? Suzanne: Yes, and I remember I sent you a screenshot of it, and then I checked her out on LinkedIn and thought, “Okay, there is somebody with that name there.” You're always saying, and Orna Ross and everyone are always saying, “Watch out for scams.” And in fact, Penguin Random House even this weekend on Instagram put out something saying, “There are lots of people impersonating us.” So I didn't take it too seriously, and it was something like, “Oh, would you be interested in us publishing your book?” And I thought, and I laughed. It was like, no, this is too good to be true. So I replied and said… Oh, I said, “Well, thank you so much. The Renters' Rights Act…” And so this is like the second week in March. “The Renters' Rights Act comes into effect on the 1st of May. If you want to publish it, you're going to need to get your skates on.” I literally did say that. Then she arranged a meeting with me the next day, on the Friday. I still was very dubious about it, and I had a think about it. What helped me, and I have the little booklet here: at the Author Lab, we did some work at the beginning, and Orna said, “Put your phones away.” And it was like, “What? Put my phone away?” Then we had to do this definition of success, and our passion, and our mission, and our purpose. I wrote down things like, I want to help landlords, and in so doing, help improve the private rented sector. I get pleasure from helping people. I want to improve standards and use my legal and practical skills, et cetera. So I thought, “Okay, what is my purpose of doing this book?” It isn't really to make money, because going with Penguin, you wouldn't do that for financial reasons, because you'd make very little money. So I thought, what is my why? My why is I want as many people to read this book as possible. And I've managed to sell a few thousand copies, but there are 2.4 million landlords, and they all need to understand this book, and the only way that I can get it out there, apart from doing ads, is to get it out in bookstores. So I thought about it, and then said, “Yes, I will do it, because I want to get the book out there.” So it's distribution. It's going to be published on the 6th of August, which is really quick, bearing in mind they contacted me in the middle of March. It's exactly the same book, it's just got different copyright wording and different blurb, different paper. Same cover, because I managed to find a fantastic cover person to do it. So they've kept everything the same. So we negotiated that book. I have no agent. They came to me. It's the attract, don't chase. I just put my lawyer hat on, and because one licence is very much like another one… I did turn down their first offer. Jo: Well done. Good negotiation. Suzanne: My daughter said to me, who's an adult daughter, she said, “But it's Penguin.” And I said, “Well, no, but it doesn't work for me.” So I had a call with them, and then they came up with something that worked for me a bit more. I did have to concede on a few things, like I can't sell it in my Shopify store. But in some ways, that was a blessing in disguise, because it means I don't get any more “Where's my book?” emails. Jo: Yes, exactly. Pros and cons of everything, basically. Suzanne: I have very clear rights to get it back. If I want it back, I can get it back and I don't have to give a reason. They're lovely. They have been really very wonderful. When I went up there a month or so ago, they gave me this book bag, and it's got on it, “I'm published by Penguin,” and I burst into tears. Jo: Aw. That's nice. Suzanne: I don't know, it just seemed like such a big deal. Because up until then I was just being all very lawyerly and task-orientated. Then I thought, “Oh my goodness,” and then it dawned on me. So I'm now in this interim period where I've taken it off Amazon and off my Shopify store, and I feel very maternalistic towards the book because, you know, it took me two and a half years, which is longer than a pregnancy. Obviously it's not a child, but it's like my book child. I've sent it off with a backpack and a drink and some snacks, and I hope that they look after him, my book. The day I took it off Amazon it was still number one. And a big shout-out to Publisher Rocket, by the way. Jo: Yes. Very, very useful for niche publishing. Suzanne: Very. It helped me choose the right niche categories. So it was number one on at least one category, often six, all the way through. I thought, “Well, it's over to them now.” They're very lovely people. They've given me some marketing assets, as they call it, some swanky graphics and things to use. We'll have to see what we do in terms of marketing. I don't mind doing marketing. I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit, and my whole blog is marketing. What I've been doing is updating my blog to include one of these graphics and to mention the book, and I got Claude to help me draft the code so it looked right. So I've been going through all of my blog posts and sending people to Amazon rather than to my Shopify store. It is mixed feelings, because I care about my book. I put a lot of effort, a lot of love, a lot of tears. No, not tears, but I put a lot of effort into it, and it's out of my control now. Jo: Yes, you said it's over to them, but obviously you will still be creating content around this topic, so you'll probably still be the biggest driver of book sales. Suzanne: Yes. Jo: Are they also suggesting, for example, a podcast tour, like pitching for podcasts? Are they going to assign you some PR? Because, also if people don't know, as we are recording this, we have a new prime minister who wants to do various things. You said no politics, but this is obviously a political thing. So you have the potential to go on a lot of different podcasts, media, talking about this, becoming almost a talking head in this kind of area. So are you angling for all that, and is that in your contract, or is it literally just going to be whatever you want to do? Suzanne: That's not in the contract. What's in the contract is very minimal. I think I've already done what I'm supposed to do. They are pitching for me to go on podcasts and things. I'll tell you a really funny coincidence. So we now have a new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, and when he was Mayor of Greater Manchester, he set up something called the Good Landlord Charter. I actually talk about it in the book, and I quote him in my book saying that good landlords mean people trying to do the right thing, or something like that. And I coincidentally came up with the same name, The Good Landlord Handbook. I'd already had the book title for a long time. So this idea of good and landlord coming together, the adjective good as opposed to criminal or rogue, and the cover being green. I'm wanting to change the narrative so it's the norm to have a good landlord, and to help people become good landlords. Or if they're good landlords, help them to understand the new rules, because the new rules are very complicated. So what I don't get involved in is this right or wrong. Is it right that landlords can't do this or have to do this? Because as an in-house lawyer, it doesn't really matter what I think about the law. GDPR, goodness me. Jo: Oh, dear. Let's not start on GDPR. Suzanne: No, exactly. Because we've just got to suck it up. I liken it to the grief cycle, that people have been going through so much change and you have the anger, the depression— Jo: Denial. Suzanne: Bargaining, the denial, and then you get to acceptance. For some people, the acceptance means they want to stop doing it. If you want to accept it and stay, you need to understand the rules. So I've deliberately just kept very practical and have kept out of all the politics of it. I have, funnily enough, become involved because I'm now seen as an expert on the Renters' Rights Act. I've worked behind the scenes with the government to help, and give comment on government guidance for landlords. I was even invited to a reception to mark the passing of the Renters' Rights Act at Downing Street with the previous prime minister, all whilst staying apolitical. I won't let anyone make me be a mouthpiece for their political view. It's more, we just have to do this if we want to continue doing it. I've been very clear on that. Jo: It's interesting you mention the grief cycle there, and you've also mentioned Claude and ChatGPT. I wonder if you might also just comment on use of AI for authors and for marketing and all this. Also with legal stuff, because for me now, if I'm looking at a particular legal thing, I tend to ask Claude. I'm like, “Can you just explain this?” or upload a contract or whatever. Although it is not legal advice, it can be quite useful. So give us your thoughts on using AI as a sidekick in your author business and also for wider life. Suzanne: I now struggle to think what life would be like without Claude. I don't use Claude to write, at all, because I have a very particular voice and a turn of phrase, and if ever Claude writes something for me, it doesn't sound like me. It flattens me, and it makes me sound a bit American. So I don't do that. I've used it in the back end of the business. For instance, my blog was down, and there was something called a recursive bot, which I don't even know what it was, and Claude helped me fix it for free. I went through, I did screenshots. When I did an ElevenLabs audiobook and did it all myself, I was literally, for every screenshot, showing it to Claude. Claude said, “Do this, press this, press that.” So I have all these different projects set up. One is the control room, where it's for my strategic thinking. If I have an idea, I want to think about something, I put it in there. I have the engine room, which is for everything techy. Like when I had the recursive bot, or if I'm wanting to have some code on the website to make it look a particular way. Then I have other things for different subjects, and I put all the resources in there, and I use it a lot as a thinking partner. I've noticed that Fable doesn't hallucinate as much, but the Opus used to. There's something called rental discrimination, and it was proofreading and said, “No, it's not rental discrimination, it's rental income discrimination,” and that was just a load of rubbish. So I would never let it go and change things without me looking at it. I went on one of your webinars a month or so ago about MCPs and all the connectors, which is fantastic. It can go into my community and pull out all the questions for one of my live streams and put it into a document in order, by theme, for instance. It can look at my MailerLite, because that's where my newsletter is with, and analyse the different open rates and click rates and things. It's so good for analysing everything, all the book sales. It helped me with my negotiation with Penguin, and it is pretty good on law. It has sometimes hallucinated things, but not so much now. I think with anything, you've always got to go back to the primary source, and this is what we learn in academia: you have to check the primary source yourself. I have a bit of a magpie brain. I'm very much a discovery writer, like you, and things occur to me as I'm doing it. I think that Claude, at the moment, is incredible. I've been quite open about it on social media that I have Claude as a business partner. I'm a solopreneur, or whatever the word is. I have quite a big business now, and lots of different things, and it's just me doing it, because I can ask Claude how to do this, and how to do that. Claude can go and check my emails and tell me, is there somebody I've not replied to, which helps a lot. Jo: Yes. I think it's empowering as a solopreneur as such. You talk there about the fixing the tech stuff. I have my web host come to me and say, “Look, you're getting so much traffic and bot stuff, and we need to put this thing in, and it's going to be $120 extra a month.” I was like, “Can you just give me an hour? I'll get back to you.” And then I just had Claude code up, and I was like, “Analyse this and tell me what we can do.” It was like, “No, you just need to flip this switch and do that.” And I'm like, “Okay, fair enough.” Then the guy said, “Oh, no, okay, actually you don't need it.” Just stuff like that. As a solopreneur, you're either going to pay somebody technically quite a lot of money, or you can get Claude or ChatGPT. We should say, the ChatGPT Sol is very good, like the Claude Fable, for example. So, yes, using it as a sidekick. I love your control room and your engine room projects as well. That's a great way of doing it. Suzanne: I wouldn't be without it now, and I would have published the book a lot later without Claude, because Claude was helping me with the Shopify store and all the many steps of things. It saved me real time. It is just fantastic. I think, like now when I'm updating my blog, I have a connection between Claude and my blog. Claude can go in, I can give it my Google Search Console results for the page: what should I change, are the headings right? All this kind of thing. And it will give me a view on every single page, which is incredible. Jo: And YouTube, and just everything. Just super useful for that business sidekick. That's what I want authors to think. I feel like authors get so obsessed with the creative side with AI, whereas actually, people like you and me, we're using it as that engine room for the solo business, which is what I love. So we're out of time. I did want to ask one more thing, which is, one of the biggest issues with a specific book like yours is when they change the law again. So do you have a plan in place for if, say, a new government changes the law again? Will you just be updating the book over time? Suzanne: I think that there'll need to be a new edition of the book in three years' time, and I've spoken to Penguin about it. Not all of this new law has been implemented, and there's going to be case law and things. So I expect that I will update the book every few years. I have some other ideas for books as well, but for the moment, I'm just taking a bit of a break. You always say we've got to refill our creative well. I really feel like that at the moment. Recently I've just got myself a personal mobile phone so that I can turn off my work one when I'm on holiday and actually take time off. Because for all the time that I was doing the book, basically from Christmas until May, I didn't have one day off. That is not good. So I'm just trying to be a bit more balanced. I had an idea to write another book for summer, but I've just decided not to, and I'm going to leave it until I feel the urge again. Jo: Oh, well done. Suzanne: Which will come. Jo: Yes, well done. Suzanne: I think there's nothing wrong with that. We just need to think what's right for us. I'm 58. So I want to be able to have time to enjoy things and not be working all the time. Jo: No, that's great. It's a sustainable business. So where can people find you and the book and your community online? Suzanne: The easiest way to find me is theindependentlandlord.com. Or if you put Suzanne Smith and landlord into Google, you'll find me as well, and there's a link on there to the book, The Good Landlord Handbook. In the community, there's a link to that on my website as well. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Suzanne. That was great. Suzanne: Thank you.The post From Blog To Community To Book: A Non-Fiction Author's Journey With Suzanne Smith first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Jack Raines is an investor at Slow Ventures, author of Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties, and creator of the popular Young Money Substack newsletter. After graduating during the pandemic, Jack turned an interest in investing into a thriving online platform that led to a book deal with Penguin and a career in venture capital. In this episode, he shares lessons from winning—and losing—money in the stock market, building an audience from scratch, and why creating content can unlock opportunities far beyond direct income. On this episode we talk about: Jack's early investing journey, including turning $6,000 into $400,000—and the lessons that came with it Why losing money early can make you a smarter long-term investor How starting a Substack newsletter led to a book deal and a career in venture capital The power of building an audience through authentic content and social media Why content creation has become a competitive advantage in venture capital Top 3 Takeaways Experience is the best financial teacher. Making mistakes early in your investing journey helps build the judgment needed to make smarter decisions later in life. Build your own platform instead of waiting for permission. Jack created his own newsletter after being turned down by media companies, which ultimately opened bigger doors than a traditional writing job. Content creates opportunities beyond revenue. A strong online presence can attract investors, founders, employers, and business opportunities that far outweigh the direct income from publishing. Notable Quotes "I actually think everybody should lose money at some point, so you know how it feels." "Why not build my own email list and keep the upside and optionality?" "Humor is really good top of funnel—as long as there's something deeper underneath it." Connect with Jack Raines: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackraines/ X: https://x.com/Jack_Raines Substack: https://www.youngmoney.co/ Book: Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties A Word from Our Sponsors: - Visit DrinkAG1.com/TMM to get a free AG1 Travel Case with 7 free AG1Travel Packs in your Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order while supplies last.  - Go to Leesa.com for 25% OFF select mattresses (through August 23, 2026) PLUS get an extra $50 off with promo code TMM, exclusive for my listeners  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the CREEP-O-RAMA crew dives face-first into Tim Burton's Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), and what begins as a thoughtful retrospective immediately crashes through the roof of Wayne Manor like the Batwing after somebody gave Bruce four Red Bulls and a head injury. We celebrate Michael Keaton's legendary Batman, Jack Nicholson's gloriously deranged Joker, Danny DeVito's sewer-goblin Penguin, and Michelle Pfeiffer's absolutely untouchable Catwoman while asking the questions Warner Bros. cowards were too afraid to answer: Who was strapping military-grade rocket launchers onto penguins? Alfred? Did Gotham's OSHA office simply burst into flames before construction began? Why is there an abandoned Arctic theme park hidden beneathGotham City, and why did literally nobody notice it? Why does Batman own enough surveillance equipment to make the NSA blush but still can't turn his own neck? Why is every vat of acid sitting completely uncovered like it's complimentary office coffee?  We spiral into increasingly unhinged theories about Catwomanactually being a zombie resurrected by emotionally supportive alley cats, Bruce Wayne secretly importing six cases of champagne from Japan just because he's rich enough to be legally confusing, and Batman patiently sitting alone in thedark for hours waiting for Commissioner Gordon to finally flip on the Bat-Signal like a Labrador waiting for someone to throw the tennis ball.  Along the way we compare Burton's gothic masterpiece tolater takes from Christopher Nolan and Matt Reeves, argue over Joker's ever-changing origin story, defend the comic-book insanity of Burton's universe, declare that the rocket-pack penguins somehow feature better underwater cinematography than Jaws 3-D (1983), and accidentally spend an alarming amount of time debating Batman's nipples, rubber cowl strength modifiers, VHS surveillance technology, and whether Gotham's building inspectors were simply paid in riddles. Look. It's Batman, We're GOING to passionately overanalyzetwo of our favorite films until the conversation evolves into Alfred operating a black-market military contractor ring out of Wayne Manor. It's inevitable. CREEP-O-RAMA is: Store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠CREEP-O-RAMA⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@creep-o-rama⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Josh: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@joshblevesque⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Artwork: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@bargainbinblasphemy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Theme: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@imfigure⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Audio: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@stranjlove

The Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation is celebrating the return of 84 acres of ancestral homeland in Monterey County. And, a fluffy penguin chick has debuted at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

Why the EPA will not be monitoring microplastics in drinking water despite concerns from the medical community. How the LA 28 Olympics will be affecting swim programs at The Rose Bowl Aquatic Centers next year. The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach debuted its newest fluffy resident. Support The L.A. Report by donating at LAist.com/join and by visiting https://laist.comSupport the show: https://laist.com

The World Cup approaches and the Penguin side desperately needs an edge against their singuin nemeses. Will Flip-Flop be ready to foot the bill?Send us Fan MailSupport the showGet in touch with the show:Show website: https://storiesforwonderfulchildren.buzzsprout.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/storiesforwonderfulchildren/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StoriesforWonderfulChildrenTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@storiesforwonderfulchildTwitter: https://twitter.com/storiesforwond1E-mail: Storiesforwonderfulchildren at gmail.

Host Candice Bloch is joined by Kalina Ivanov, an Emmy-winning production designer and storyboard artist with a rich background in both film and television, spanning various genres and styles. She's known for her work on projects like Little Miss Sunshine, Grey Gardens, Peacemaker, Lovecraft Country, and The Penguin. As the first artists brought on board a project, Production Designers are responsible for the overall look and feel of a story. Through collaboration on selecting locations, designing sets, and coordinating with other departments like cinematography and costume design, they establish the visual direction and aesthetics of a piece.In their conversation, we discover Kalina's creative process, collaboration tips, and insights into visual storytelling in film and television. Kalina combines her artistic vision with a deep understanding of character and story to produce her impressive body of work. Kalina shares about doing her own research and creating mood boards, and offers first-hand stories about some of her past projects.For example, for the critically acclaimed HBO show, The Penguin, Kalina emphasizes that she focused on telling a New York story, which required careful consideration of the streets and architecture to achieve the desired atmosphere. And for her work on George Clooney's period film, Boys in the Boat, her research and the historically accurate boathouse built for the production were crucial in capturing the era's essence.To learn more about Kalina and her work, as well the Production Designers Collective: https://www.kalinaivanov.com/https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0412055/https://www.instagram.com/kalina506/https://www.productiondesignerscollective.org/Support the show---Subscribe to learn more about filmmaking, production, media makers, creator resources, visual storytelling, and every aspect that brings film, television, and video projects from concepts to our screens. Check out the MediaMakerSpotlight.com show page to find even more conversations with industry professionals that inspire, educate, and entertain!We on the Women in Film & Video (WIFV) Podcast Team work hard to make this show a great resource for our listeners, and we thank you for listening!

“The human part is 99 percent. The AI part is maybe 1 percent — even if 100 percent of the manuscript was dumped onto the page by AI.” — Keith Teare on writing with AI What is “real” authorship in our AI age? For That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare, all authorship, even the most AI-enabled, is real. It's the cave-dwelling Luddites who are the sloppy ones. For Keith, true creativity, in our age of Claude and Gemini, almost requires the use of AI. A couple of weeks ago Keith confessed, or perhaps boasted, that he is writing an AI-assisted book entitled Who Owns Intelligence. This week, publishing discovered what happens when others play the same game without public acknowledgement. So we have the case of the “red-hot” debut novel, fought over by fourteen publishers, dropped overnight when the agent found AI in the mix. “It's a fantastic book,” the book's agent acknowledged, before firing its less than transparent author. Which, for Keith, is precisely the scandal. His position, argued in this week's editorial “AI Detected,” is pretty absolute. Nothing is written by AI, Keith argues, because AI has no will. It doesn't produce a single word unless asked. The human part is 99 percent, he says, even when 100 percent of the manuscript is spat out by the machine. So the real sin isn't using AI but not acknowledging its use. So, on Who Owns Intelligence, Keith makes it crystal clear that “AI was heavily used in the writing of this book.” I'm not so sure. Amazon is now infested with AI slop that requires no authorship. Besides, Keith clearly has no love of reading books. He admits to reading only a single volume in the last couple of years. And he's still smarting from being, in his mind at least, ripped off by the publishing industry for his last published book some 40 years ago. He no longer needs to read books, he pronounces, because his world-view is already set. For a man who thinks he knows everything, AI isn't scary. Maybe we should rename him Claude. Postscript. Full Keith-style disclosure: these shownotes were produced with the help of Anthropic. When I fed Claude my draft, it responded: “‘Maybe we should rename him Claude' is a closer I'm contractually obliged to enjoy.” Nothing, as Keith says, is written by AI. Although some algorithms seem to have cheeky opinions of their own. Maybe Anthropic should rename it Keith. Five Takeaways •       Nothing Is Written by AI. Keith's absolutism starts from the machine's lack of will: AI won't produce a word unless a human asks. His Who Owns Intelligence — fifteen chapters, arguments, and references — was structured in ninety minutes from years of thinking; the AI produced a manuscript he then shaped, like a color grader working sliders in Photoshop. The human part is 99 percent even when the machine types every word. And authorship was never solitary anyway: Plato's contemporaries thought writing itself degraded ideas, and no publisher will touch a book that hasn't passed through an editor and a subeditor. If editing doesn't change authorship, Keith asks, why would AI?•       Transparency, Not Technology. The week's cautionary tale: a debut novel fought over by fourteen publishers, dropped when the agent discovered AI — while conceding, in the same breath, “it's a fantastic book.” For Keith the scandal is concealment, not composition: own the tool, as he now does with a strapline under his byline. The detection regime, meanwhile, is collapsing on its own inaccuracy — universities dropped their AI detectors this week, and Substack's new detection partner scored Keith's human-shaped editorial as 100 percent AI when a fair reading was 40. Cheating exists only against obsolete rules: the question is moving from did you use AI to how well did you use it.•       “The Publishing Industry Is Basically a Scam.” Keith's response to Andy Hunter's ban on AI-generated books — from last week's Keen On interview — was one word: outrageous. There is no such thing as an AI-written book, only good and bad ones; and the true victim of publishing is not the bookstore but the author. Exhibit A: his own 1988 book sold 50,000 copies at £3.99 and earned him roughly £10,000 — about 5p a copy — while Penguin took the rest. The future he wants is direct, author-to-reader, without the middlemen. As for “organic” artisanal literature: real, elite, and tiny — the new vinyl, which is itself cut these days from digital masters.•       Sharks, Playing Their Own Book. Leopold Aschenbrenner — fired young from OpenAI, transfigured by one prophetic essay into the “Nostradamus of AI” — saw his $45 billion, heavily leveraged Situational Awareness fund lose $600 million, get margin-called, and sell to Ken Griffin's Citadel. (He is, Keith suspects, still super rich.) Zuckerberg's sudden conversion to open source as “the distribution of wealth to the people” struck us both as a bit rich; Amodei's “I'm not against open source as long as it's safe” — from a man on record that no AI is safe — translates as: against. Keith's deeper complaint, from an admiring Claude user: you can't trust Dario. And China, hardware-constrained, has made open source its national strategy — undermining American foundation-model revenue one cheap routed prompt at a time.•       Money Won't Matter by 2036? Elon Musk predicts money becomes irrelevant within a decade; Vinod Khosla — our post of the week — thinks he might just have a point. Keith, ever the economics tutor, reaches for tendency and ceteris paribus: money is a means of exchange and a store of value, and if abundance drives the labor-value of things toward zero, its irrelevance is not illogical — though between tendency and reality lies a whole ton of variables. I bet the opposite: that by 2036 money will matter more than ever. The problem, we discovered, is the stake — you can't bet money on money not mattering. Wives and children were proposed and hastily withdrawn (“We'd be losing, Andrew”). Loser buys dinner — at a free restaurant. About the Co-Host Keith Teare is the publisher of That Was The Week, the essential weekly tech newsletter, and founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. A serial entrepreneur — co-founder of, among others, EasyNet and RealNames — he was present at the creation of the UK internet and has spent four decades at the intersection of technology, capital, and ideas. He joins Keen On America every Sunday to make sense of the week in tech. His AI-assisted book in progress is titled Who Owns Intelligence. References: •       That Was The Week — Keith's newsletter, including this week's editorial, “AI Detected.”•       The Wall Street Journal — on the red-hot debut novel at the center of publishing's AI mystery: fourteen publishers, one discovery, one dropped author.•      ...

July 30, 1935. The first Penguin books are published, kickstarting the paperback revolution. Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

Craig Petty stops by the studio to chat with Erik about the brand-new tricks that are launching at Magic Live. New stuff from Alex Latorre, Lloyd Barnes, and Mark Mason will be available! They also preview the first time Penguin will ever do bundle deals, and even more exciting, we will have shopping bags! Find out all the info that's fit to dish coming up at Magic Live 2026.

Message Dan and MikeWe're back from our first San Diego Comic-Con with press credentials, and this episode kicks off a two-part recap of the entire experience. Part one covers our arrival, the scramble to find the convention center on San Diego's trolley system, and the reality check that comes with picking up press badges for the first time. We also take a detour to Seaport Village for tacos and a beer with a view of the harbor, then head north to UC San Diego for a surprise highlight of the trip: Shredding the Multiverse, a concert reimagining television and film scores from shows like Cobra Kai, Spider-Man, and The Penguin with a full orchestra and rock energy.From there we walk through preview night, our first real taste of the exhibit hall, complete with two-hour lines, an ocean of vendors, and a candid discussion about what press credentials do and don't actually get you at a con this size. We get into a few Comic-Con-brain moments (yes, we coin the term), some sibling bickering about San Diego weather, and a genuinely strange arcade cabinet encounter that turns into its own little subplot.The back half of the episode dives into two of our favorite panels from day one. First, a look at the upcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opening in Los Angeles this September, and why it's a celebration of storytelling and visual art far beyond just Star Wars. Then we sit in on Brad Bird's career retrospective panel, tracing his path from The Iron Giant and The Incredibles to Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and his surprising, nearly two-hundred-episode history with The Simpsons. Bird also previews his new animated sci-fi noir series Ray Gun and drops a small but exciting update on the status of Incredibles 3.It's an exhausting, funny, occasionally chaotic first day, and we haven't even gotten to Hall H yet. That's coming in part two, along with days two and three of the convention. Thanks for riding along with us on our first Comic-Con as press, sore feet and all.Support the showOh Brother Podcast:Support the Show! (Be The First to Listen with Early Access)Listen on all podcast platformsSubscribe on YouTubeFollow us on Instagram

La escritora Marta Jiménez Serrano hará un viaje literario a través de los siete pecados capitales y nos presentará a profesionales claves para que un libro exista y que no son ni escritores ni escritoras.Hoy nos detenemos en la gula y charlamos con Nora Grosse, diseñadora en Penguin, que nos explica cómo un libro también "entra por los ojos". 

The Hoiho yellow-eyed penguin is set to face protection from fishers around the Otago Peninsula. From September 16th, emergency set-net restrictions to protect the birds around the Otago peninsula will become permanent. But is it enough to help the penguins, with number at critical levels and falling fast. General Manager of the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust, Norcombe Barker spoke to Melissa Chan-Green.

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With more than 25 years of experience in global publishing, Shanta Inshiqaq has built a career leading international sales, marketing, distribution, and strategic growth initiatives for major publishing organizations. She has held senior leadership roles at companies including Penguin, Bloomsbury Publishing, Baker & Taylor, and Columbia Business School Executive Education.Drawing on decades of corporate leadership, relationship building, and market expansion expertise, she now advises publishers and authors through Inshiqaq Global, helping clients navigate growth, partnerships, and industry strategy with practical insight and a global perspective.In today's episode of Smashing the Plateau, you will learn how decades of insider experience in a specialized industry can become the foundation for a consulting business built on access, relationships, and trust.Shanta and I discuss:How Shanta's career in publishing began — and why it didn't start the way she planned [02:07]Why her career grew through relationships and reputation rather than job applications [04:32]What it means to be a "starter-upper" and why she kept getting tapped for new roles [11:39]What changed when she left corporate life to run her own business [13:00]Who her ideal clients are and what she helps them do [15:38]How she decides what to say yes and no to as a new business owner [19:04]The role of trusted peers and a small circle of thinking partners [20:40]Her mission to stop gatekeeping and unravel the publishing matrix for clients [23:32]Learn more about Shanta at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanta-inshiqaq and www.inshiqaqglobal.com.______________________________________________________________About Smashing the PlateauSmashing the Plateau is a podcast for experienced independent leaders who have left corporate roles to build sustainable, expertise-based businesses.Each episode features a thoughtful, experience-driven conversation about what changes when you no longer have the infrastructure of an organization behind you.We explore judgment, decision-making under uncertainty, growth plateaus, identity shifts, and the role of trusted thinking partners in sustaining long-term success.______________________________________________________________Take the Next Step• Experience the power of peer perspective.Join a live guest session and connect with experienced professionals navigating similar challenges:https://smashingtheplateau.com/guest• Stay connected to the conversation.Get new episodes, reflections, and invitations delivered to your inbox:https://smashingtheplateau.com/news

On this Interview episode Hunter sits down with creator Luke W. Henderson to talk all things "Rise of the Flightless", the Penguin vs Robots anthology! Hunter's story "Penguinomicon" with Brianna Kelly & Gaspar Flores is contained in the book!Support the Campaign:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lukewhenderson/rise-of-the-flightless-a-penguin-v-robots-comics-anthologyLuke:Links - https://linktr.ee/lukewhendersonBlueSky - https://bsky.app/profile/lukewhenderson.bsky.socialLetters From the Void - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lukewhenderson/letters-from-the-void-1-2-an-existential-horror-anthology

On today's show, host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with Sophie Lewis about her new book, Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe. Lewis describes her journey from being a “queer runaway” child to a professional writer as an adult. Her writing confronts the white, bourgeois feminist worldview and advocates for a radical embrace of “femme” and a future with abundance for all. In Femmephilia, Lewis challenges readers to take femme seriously because there's still a confusion about what femininity means, for anti-feminists and feminists alike. Lewis distinguishes femme from femininity, calling the former a verb and a practice in the service of anti-oppression and anti-fascism. In theorizing femme, Lewis unpacks class and capitalism, rape culture, racial supremacy, and coloniality. Lewis says we shouldn't turn away from “girly” things because in them we can find joy, pleasure, and excess.  They also discuss the invisibilized labor of care work, the ideology of the nuclear family, and Hilary Clinton and Kamala Harris's unsuccessful presidential bids. Lewis wants us to move away from anti-utopian compromise and believe that we can have bread and roses and hormones too.  Sophie Lewis is a self-described ex-academic and feminist writer living in Philadelphia. She is the author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, Enemy Feminisms, and finally Femmephilia, an essay collection which just came out a few weeks ago. Her next book is called The Liberation of Children, and will be out from Penguin in 2027.  Featured image of the cover of Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe. Did you enjoy this story? Your funding makes great, local journalism like this possible. Donate hereThe post Putting the Femme in Feminism appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Berto Colon joins the crew for a legendary session, diving deep into his incredible run through some of television's biggest hits. From his unforgettable time as Lorenzo Tejada on Power Book II: Ghost to his latest roles working alongside masters like Taylor Sheridan in Yellowstone spin-off Dutton Ranch and Colin Farrell in The Penguin, Berto breaks down the reality of the Hollywood hustle and staying busy in a competitive industry. Turn $5 into $150 on https://link.prizepicks.com/LME0/CREW Don't sleep on @ultrapouches. New customers get 15% Off with code CREW at http://takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew Mason (Professor of History at Brigham Young University) chatted with Richard Bell (Professor of History at the University of Maryland) about his new book The American Revolution and the Fate of the World (Penguin, 2025). They had a wide-ranging conversation about this wide-ranging book, including how and why there hasn't been a book quite like it written before, and how Bell illuminates both the “greatest hits” of American Revolutionary legend and some “deep cuts” that readers probably haven't encountered before. For instance, they discussed how Bell recasts iconic events like the Boston Tea Party as having a much bigger context and impact than the provincial setting for most tellings. But also they mused over why certain events and participants, such as American privateers captured and turned into prisoners of war suffering for their country just as much as the soldiers at Valley Forge, have not been part of the central mythology of the Revolution. This and more make up this conversation about this important book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Matthew Mason (Professor of History at Brigham Young University) chatted with Richard Bell (Professor of History at the University of Maryland) about his new book The American Revolution and the Fate of the World (Penguin, 2025). They had a wide-ranging conversation about this wide-ranging book, including how and why there hasn't been a book quite like it written before, and how Bell illuminates both the “greatest hits” of American Revolutionary legend and some “deep cuts” that readers probably haven't encountered before. For instance, they discussed how Bell recasts iconic events like the Boston Tea Party as having a much bigger context and impact than the provincial setting for most tellings. But also they mused over why certain events and participants, such as American privateers captured and turned into prisoners of war suffering for their country just as much as the soldiers at Valley Forge, have not been part of the central mythology of the Revolution. This and more make up this conversation about this important book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Philippa is joined by T.M. Payne — and her co-conspirator Susie — for what may be the most gloriously chaotic episode in Quick Book Reviews history. There are kitchen implement debates, merch updates, a real duck called Crispy, and a live Penguin biscuit demonstration that will genuinely change how you eat biscuits forever. Oh, and there's a brilliant book to talk about too.But first, three book reviews.

Matthew Mason (Professor of History at Brigham Young University) chatted with Richard Bell (Professor of History at the University of Maryland) about his new book The American Revolution and the Fate of the World (Penguin, 2025). They had a wide-ranging conversation about this wide-ranging book, including how and why there hasn't been a book quite like it written before, and how Bell illuminates both the “greatest hits” of American Revolutionary legend and some “deep cuts” that readers probably haven't encountered before. For instance, they discussed how Bell recasts iconic events like the Boston Tea Party as having a much bigger context and impact than the provincial setting for most tellings. But also they mused over why certain events and participants, such as American privateers captured and turned into prisoners of war suffering for their country just as much as the soldiers at Valley Forge, have not been part of the central mythology of the Revolution. This and more make up this conversation about this important book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

During her two terms as PM, Jacinda gained global attention for her response to the terror attack in Christchurch and for giving birth at the same time as running the country.Jacinda grew up as a good Mormon girl who planned on making a difference behind the scenes.But when she unexpectedly became head of the Labor Party, only weeks away from a federal election, Jacinda discovered she had a talent for leadership.Jacinda's memoir about her time as PM and her life before and after is called A Different Kind of Power.This episode of Conversations was produced by Jen Leake and Nicola Harrison is the Executive Producer.Further InformationA Different Kind of Power is published by Penguin.For more information, Penguin authors Jacinda Ardern

On June 10, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned two pieces of artwork to Cambodia: an Angkor statue and a sandstone lintel. It's the latest repatriation effort by the U.S.'s premier art museum, and the third time the Met has had to give up Cambodian artifacts specifically. Matthew Campbell's The Man Who Stole The Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy (Penguin, 2026) dives into the story of the Cambodian antiquities trade, from looted temples in the Cambodian forests, through dealers in Bangkok like Douglas Latchford, and then into museums and billionaire homes in the West. And he also digs into how this trade fell apart: How the U.S. Department of Justice and activists in Cambodia pressured dealers and museums like the Met to give this art back. Matthew is an award-winning reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. His previous book, Dead in the Water—co-authored with Kit Chellel—was selected as a Book of the Year by The Economist, the Financial Times, and The Times. Matt has reported from more than twenty-five countries on crime, corruption, terrorism, economics, and the environment. His work has earned some of journalism's highest honors, including awards from the Gerald Loeb Foundation, the Overseas Press Club, the National Press Club, SOPA, and SABEW for both feature and investigative reporting You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Man Who Stole the Gods. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

On June 10, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned two pieces of artwork to Cambodia: an Angkor statue and a sandstone lintel. It's the latest repatriation effort by the U.S.'s premier art museum, and the third time the Met has had to give up Cambodian artifacts specifically. Matthew Campbell's The Man Who Stole The Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy (Penguin, 2026) dives into the story of the Cambodian antiquities trade, from looted temples in the Cambodian forests, through dealers in Bangkok like Douglas Latchford, and then into museums and billionaire homes in the West. And he also digs into how this trade fell apart: How the U.S. Department of Justice and activists in Cambodia pressured dealers and museums like the Met to give this art back. Matthew is an award-winning reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. His previous book, Dead in the Water—co-authored with Kit Chellel—was selected as a Book of the Year by The Economist, the Financial Times, and The Times. Matt has reported from more than twenty-five countries on crime, corruption, terrorism, economics, and the environment. His work has earned some of journalism's highest honors, including awards from the Gerald Loeb Foundation, the Overseas Press Club, the National Press Club, SOPA, and SABEW for both feature and investigative reporting You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Man Who Stole the Gods. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Paul Skenes future Yankee? Jason Robertson future Penguin? Paul Zeise at the bottom of the hour. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paul Skenes future Yankee? Jason Robertson future Penguin? Paul Zeise at the bottom of the hour.

Captivating for both its grandeur and intimacy, Lift Every Voice (Penguin Books, 2026) explores the past's capacity to be both a source of dread and empowerment, an unshakable reminder of violence and an indelible testament to the endurance of love. In virtuosic poems that are wise, musical, richly layered, and saturated with vivid imagery, Williams honors a mother “who knew seven ways to say bitch under her breath,” a grandma whose smile “reflects the world,” and wonders at “the impossible lift” of forgiveness. Lift Every Voice is a staggering tribute to personal and collective evolutions, a vital chorus that answers only to God, community, and the empowered self. Phillip B. Williams is from Chicago, Illinois, and is the author of two collections of poetry: Thief in the Interior, which was the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. Williams is also the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. His 2025 novel, Ours, was named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, People, Los Angeles Times, NPR, and more. You can find Phillip on Instagram. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

HB 1268 a major win for education freedom in NH :: Mark Edge joins us remotely :: Is NH the "most free" place? :: New entry/exit policy in EU slowing down airport lines :: Sarah in NM calls about the Spanish/American war and driver licenses :: U.N. secretary general wants AI killer robots banned :: David in NM calls to ask about salt lending :: salt@markedge.org :: web blocking not going as smoothly as hoped by those who demanded it :: 2026-07-12 :: Hosts: Stu, Mr. Penguin, Mark Edge

HB 1268 a major win for education freedom in NH :: Mark Edge joins us remotely :: Is NH the "most free" place? :: New entry/exit policy in EU slowing down airport lines :: Sarah in NM calls about the Spanish/American war and driver licenses :: U.N. secretary general wants AI killer robots banned :: David in NM calls to ask about salt lending :: salt@markedge.org :: web blocking not going as smoothly as hoped by those who demanded it :: 2026-07-12 :: Hosts: Stu, Mr. Penguin, Mark Edge

In a sleepy Canberra suburb, Bek Condello was raised in a strict patriarchal Pentecostal movement. The influence of the Geelong Revival Centre extended deeply into the lives of the congregation, promoting discipline and dictating how girls and women behaved, who they socialised with and who they would marry. After finding her way out and discovering her own identity, Bek has written a memoir, out on 14 July, called Can You Handle a Girl Like Me. Through her story she hopes she can inspire others to rebuild and thrive after deep loss.LinksCan You Handle a Girl Like Me — by Bek Condello, Penguin, 2026Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder — Richard Baker's podcast about the Geelong Revival CentreCredits:Produced by Sarah SteelMusic by Joe GouldYou can support Let's Talk About Sects here. Sarah will be appearing at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney on Saturday 22 August, chairing Anke Richter's session which also features Laura McConnell, more info about that here. And Joe Gould who you'll know as the composer of this podcast is touring with his band The Crooked Fiddle Band for their 20th anniversary – they count Brian Eno amongst their fans. More info about that here.If you have been personally affected by involvement in a cult, or would like to support those who have been, you can find support with or donate to Cult Information and Family Support if you're in Australia (via cifs.org.au), and you can find resources outside of Australia with the International Cultic Studies Association (via internationalculticstudies.org). If you or someone you know is in crisis or needs support right now, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia, or find your local crisis centre via the International Association for Suicide Prevention website at iasp.info. Find Sarah's audiobook Do As I Say here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kristian Harloff breaks down the biggest movie and entertainment news stories of the day, led by huge updates from **Marvel Studios** and **Spider-Man: Brand New Day**. New box office tracking suggests Tom Holland's next Spider-Man adventure could open to an incredible **$190 million** domestically, making it one of the biggest superhero openings ever. On top of that, Marvel Studios is officially returning to **Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con**, promising fans "a look at what's next" for the MCU. Kristian discusses what surprises could be in store and what this means for Marvel's future. Plus, new reports claim **The Batman** universe is expanding again with another villain-focused HBO series following the success of **The Penguin**, **Naruto** has launched a worldwide casting search for its live-action adaptation, and **Netflix** is reportedly in talks to acquire movie social platform **Letterboxd**.  Stories For Today: * Spider-Man: Brand New Day Three-Week Box Office Tracking Points To Amazing $190M Opening Weekend * Marvel Studios Is Officially Returning To Hall H At San Diego Comic-Con For "A Look At What's Next" * After Penguin, The Batman's Crime Saga To Get Another Villainous TV Series * Naruto Movie Launches Global Casting Search To Find Actors To Play Live-Action Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura * Netflix In Talks To Buy Letterboxd Today's show is headlined by two massive Marvel stories as **Spider-Man: Brand New Day** continues to build momentum at the box office and Marvel Studios prepares for a highly anticipated return to **Hall H**. Kristian discusses what announcements fans should expect, including possible updates on the MCU's future, Avengers, X-Men, and more. The episode also explores the continued expansion of Matt Reeves' Batman universe, Netflix's reported interest in Letterboxd, and the global casting search for one of the most anticipated anime adaptations ever. If you're a fan of Marvel, Spider-Man, DC, Batman, Naruto, Netflix, Letterboxd, or the latest movie news, this episode is for you. #SpiderManBrandNewDay #SpiderMan #Marvel #MCU #MarvelStudios #HallH #SDCC #ComicCon #Batman #TheBatman #ThePenguin #Naruto #Netflix #Letterboxd #TomHolland #MovieNews #KristianHarloffShow #EntertainmentNews COME JOIN HARLOFF, ELLIS AND STERGER FOR A NIGHT OF COMEDY - THURSDAY, 10/8 @ 7:30PM SHOW HOSTED BY:  KYLE LEWIS  https://brokerage.govs.com/shows/376674  SPONSORS: FACTOR: Head to https://www.Factormeals.com/kristian50off and use code kristian50off to get 50 percent off and free daily greens per box, with new subscription only, while supplies last until 09/27/2026. RUGIET: Head to https://www.Rugiet.com/KRISTIAN and get 15% off your ED treatment. MINGS CHANNEL:https://www.youtube.com/@MingsMercilessFitness BECOME A MEMBER & JOIN THE COMMUNITY: Get exclusive perks by joining this channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7BZTnHihGgs7XZmXEBirjA/join Discord Link: https://discord.com/invite/KNV5YMEAQP WATCH MORE FROM THE KRISTIAN HARLOFF SHOW: Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@KRISTIANHARLOFFCLIPSCHANNEL Full Show Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSJdE28YyUT3KAwbzDsv6mdR-gwUiydQg Capes and Cowls: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSJdE28YyUT0QmNMnWrRYdAnoy8W6jz3e Movie Reactions: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSJdE28YyUT37TldLZxtYCa0tUTrT8e4e SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheBigThingShow Merch Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/the-big-thing-kh-channel?ref_id=27393 Amazon Wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/MGDDPG7X6NW FOLLOW KRISTIAN HARLOFF: Cameo: https://cameo.com/kristianharloff Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/kristianharloff Facebook: https://facebook.com/harloff Instagram: https://instagram.com/kristianharloff THE KRISTIAN HARLOFF SHOW TEAM: Hosts: Kevin Smets @StarWarsSquad Kris Carr: @TwoFilthyCasualsPod John Rocha: @JohnRochaSays Roxy Striar: @roxystriar Mike Kalinowski: @MrMikeKalinowski Steph Sabraw: @StephSabraw Winston A. Marshall: @TheSwaggyBlerd Producers: Luke: @GalaxyGeeks PLD: @PLDprojects Submit questions for future shows: https://facebook.com/harloff