Podcasts about written word media

IngramSpark announced new pricing and a higher market access fee that affects every author using their platform. Draft2Digital revealed a major shift in Smashwords royalties, especially for lower priced ebooks. Written Word Media released new survey data showing what separates hobbyists from the authors earning real money. All that and more in the self-publishing news this week. YouTube Channel Memberships (podcast) – https://DaleLinks.com/Membership YouTube Channel Memberships (main channel) – https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships   IngramSpark - https://IngramSpark.com   IngramSpark Rate Card 2026 - https://www.ingramspark.com/hubfs/Rate%20Card_IngramSpark_2026.pdf   IngramSpark December 2025 Newsletter - https://www.ingramspark.com/newsletter-december2025   Draft2Digital - https://DaleLinks.com/D2D (referral link)  Draft2Digital Royalty Rates - https://www.draft2digital.com/blog/royalty-rates/   Smashwords End of Year Sale - https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos   Written Word Media: 2025 Indie Author Survey Results - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/2025-indie-author-survey-results-insights-into-self-publishing-for-authors/   Authors Guild: What Authors Need to Know About the Baker & Taylor Closure and How It Affects Library Access to Your Book - https://authorsguild.org/news/what-authors-need-to-know-about-the-baker-and-taylor-closure/   Booklinker - https://Booklinker.com  Book Award Pro - https://DaleLinks.com/BookAwardPro (affiliate link)  Twin Flames Studios: The Ghostwriting of Christmas Past, Present, and Future - https://twinflamesstudios.com/ghostwriting/ Subscribe to my email newsletter - https://DaleLinks.com/SignUp   Join Channel Memberships - https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships  Join Me on Discord - https://DaleLinks.com/Discord  Check out my main YouTube channel  - https://www.youtube.com/@dalelroberts  My Books - https://DaleLinks.com/MyBooks  Wanna tip me? Visit https://dalelroberts.gumroad.com/coffee. Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts  

What does it really take to build a multi-six-figure author business with no advertising? Is running your own warehouse really necessary for direct sales success — or is there a simpler path using print-on-demand that works just as well? In this conversation, Sacha Black and I compare our very different approaches to selling direct, from print on demand to pallets of books, and explore why the right model depends entirely on who you are and what your goals are for your author business. In the intro, Memoir Examples and interviews [Reedsy, The Creative Penn memoir tips]; Written Word Media annual indie author survey results; Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition; Business for Authors webinars; Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant; Camino Portuguese Coastal on My Camino Podcast; Creating while Caring Community with Donn King; The Buried and the Drowned by J.F. Penn 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 Sacha Black is the author of YA and non-fiction for authors and previously hosted The Rebel Author Podcast. As Ruby Roe, she is a multi-six-figure author of sapphic romantasy. 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 Two models for selling direct: print on demand vs running your own warehouse. Plus, check out Sacha's solo Rebel Author episode about the details of the warehouse. Cashflow management Kickstarter lessons: pre-launch followers, fulfillment time, and realistic timelines How Sacha built a multi-six-figure business through TikTok with zero ad spend Matching your business model to your personality and skill set Building resilience: staff salaries, SOPs, and planning for when things change You can find Ruby at RubyRoe.co.uk and on TikTok @rubyroeauthor and on Instagram @sachablackauthor Transcript of the interview Joanna: Sacha Black is the author of YA and nonfiction for authors, and previously hosted the Rebel Author podcast. As Ruby Roe, she is a multi-six-figure author of sapphic romance. So welcome back to the show, Sacha. Sacha: Hello. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be here. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. Now, just for context, for everybody listening, Sacha has a solo episode on her Rebel Author podcast, last week as we record this, which goes into specific lessons around the warehouse in more detail, including financials. So we are going to come at this from a slightly different angle in our discussion today, which is really about two different ways of doing selling direct. I want us to start though, Sacha, in case people don't know your background, in case they've missed out. Can you just give us a quick recap of your indie author journey, because you haven't just come out of nowhere and jumped into this business and done incredibly well? Sacha's Indie Author Journey Sacha: No, I really haven't. Okay. So 2013, I started writing. So 12 years ago I started writing with the intention to publish, because I was writing before, but not with the intention. 2017 I first self-published and then two years after that, in 2019, I quit the day job. But let me be clear, it wasn't because I was rolling in self-published royalties or commissions or whatever you want to call them. I was barely scraping by. And so those are what I like to call my hustle years because I mean, I still hustle, but it was a different kind. It was grind and hustle. So I did a lot of freelance work. I did a lot of VA work for other authors. I did speaking, I was podcasting, teaching courses, and so on and so forth. 2022, in the summer, I made a realisation that I'd created another job for myself rather than a business that I wanted to grow and thrive in and was loving life and all of that stuff. And so I took a huge risk and I slowed down everything, and I do mean everything. I slowed down the speaking, I slowed down the courses, I slowed down the nonfiction, and — I poured everything into writing what became the first Ruby Roe book. I published that in February 2023. In August/September 2023, I stopped all freelance work. And to be clear, at that point, I also wasn't entirely sure if I was going to be able to pay my bills with Ruby, but I could see that she had the potential there and I was making enough to scrape by. And there's nothing if not a little bit of pressure to make you work hard. So that is when I stopped the freelance. And then in November 2023, so two months later, I started TikTok in earnest. And then a month after that, December the eighth, I went viral. And then what's relevant to this is that two days after that, on December the 10th, I had whipped up my minimum viable Shopify, and that went live. Then roll on, I did more of the same, published more Ruby Roe books. I made a big change to my Shopify. So at that point it was still print on demand Shopify, and then February 2025, I took control and took the reins and rented a warehouse and started fulfilling distribution myself. The Ten-Year Overnight Success Joanna: So great. So really good for people to realise that 2013, you started writing with the intention, like, seriously, I want this to be what I do. And it was 2019 when you quit the day job, but really it was 2023 when you actually started making decent money, right? Sacha: Almost like we all need 10 years. Joanna: Yeah. I mean, it definitely takes time. So I wanted just to set that scene there. And also that you did at least a year of print on demand Shopify before getting your own warehouse. Sacha: Yeah, maybe 14 months. Joanna: Yeah, 14 months. Okay. So we are going to revisit some of these, but I also just want as context, what was your day job so people know? Sacha: So I was a project manager in a local government, quite corporate, quite conservative place. And I played the villain. It was great. I would helicopter into departments and fix them up and look at processes that were failing and restructure things and bring in new software and bits and bobs like that. The Importance of Business Skills Joanna: Yeah. So I think that's important too, because your job was fixing things and looking at processes, and I feel like that is a lot of what you've done and we'll revisit that. Sacha: How did I not realise that?! Joanna: I thought you did know that. No. Well, oh my goodness. And let's just put my business background in context. I'm sure most people have heard it before, but I was an IT consultant for about 13 years, but much of my job was going into businesses and doing process mapping and then doing software to fix that. And also I worked, I'm not an accountant, but I worked in financial accounting departments. So I think this is really important context for people to realise that learning the craft is one thing, but learning business is a completely different game, right? Sacha: Oh, it is. I have learnt — it's wild because I always feel like there's no way you can learn more than in your first year of publishing because everything is brand new. But I genuinely feel like this past 18 months I have learnt as much, if not more, because of the business, because of money, because of all of the other legal regulation type changes in the last 18 months. It's just been exhausting in terms of learning. It's great, but also it is a lot to learn. There is just so much to business. Joanna's Attempts to Talk Sacha Out of the Warehouse Joanna: So that's one thing. Now, I also want to say for context, when you decided to start a warehouse, how much effort did I put into trying to persuade you not to do this? Sacha: Oh my goodness, me. I mean a lot. There were probably two dinners, several coffees, a Zoom. It was like, don't do it. Don't do it. You got me halfway there. So for everybody listening, I went big and I was like, oh, I'm going to buy shipping containers and convert them and put them on a plot of land and all of this stuff. And Joanna very sensibly turned around and was like, hmm, why don't you rent somewhere that you can bail out of if it doesn't work? And I was like, oh yeah, that does sound like a good idea. Joanna: Try it, try it before you really commit. Okay. So let's just again take a step back because the whole point of doing this discussion for me is because you are doing really well and it is amazing what you are doing and what some other people are doing with warehouses. But I also sell direct and in the same way as you used to, which is I use Bookfunnel for ebooks and audiobooks and I use BookVault for print on demand books, and people can also use Lulu. That's another option for people. So you don't have to do direct sales in the way that you've done it. And part of the reason to do this episode was to show people that there are gradations of selling direct. Why Sell Direct? Joanna: But I wanted to go back to the basics around this. Why might people consider selling direct, even in a really simple way, for example, just ebooks from their website, or what might be reasons to sell direct rather than just sending everything to Amazon or other stores? Sacha: I think, well, first of all, it depends on what you want as a business model. For me, I have a similar background to you in that I was very vulnerable when I was in corporate because of redundancies, and so that bred a bit of control freakness inside me. And having control of my customers was really important to me. We don't get any data from Amazon or Kobo really, or anywhere, even though all of these distributors are incredible for us in our careers. We don't actually have direct access to readers, and you do with Shopify. You know everything about your reader, and that is priceless. Because once you have that data and you have delivered a product, a book, merchandise, something that that reader values and appreciates, you can then sell to them again and again and again. I have some readers who have been on my website who have spent almost four figures now. I mean, that is just — one person's done that and I have thousands of people who are coming to the website on a regular basis. So definitely that control and access to readers is a huge reason for doing it. Customising the Reader Relationship Sacha: And also I think that you can, depending on how you do this model, there are ways to do some of the things I'm going to talk about digitally as well. But for me, I really like the physical aspect of it. We are able to customise the relationship with our customers. We can give them more because we are in control of delivery. And so by that I mean we could give art prints, which lots of my readers really value. We can do — you could send those digitally if you wanted to, but we can add in extra freebies like our romance pop sockets, that makes them feel like they are part of my reader group. They're part of a community. It creates this belonging. So I think there is just so much more that you can do when you are in control of that relationship and in control of the access to it. Joanna: Yeah. And on that, I mean, one of the reasons we can do really cool print books — and again, we're going to come back to print on demand, but I use print on demand. You don't have to buy pallets of books as Sacha does. You can just do print on demand. Obviously the financials are different, but I can still do foiling and custom end papers and ribbons and all this with print on demand through BookVault custom printing and bespoke printing. The Speed of Money Joanna: But also, I think the other thing with the money — I don't know if you even remember this, because it's very different when you are selling direct — you can set up your system so you get paid like every single day, right? Or every week? Sacha: Yes. Joanna: So the money is faster because with Amazon, with any of these other systems, it can take 30, 60, 90 days for the money to get to you. So faster money, you are in more control of the money. And you can also do a lot more things like bundling and like you mentioned, much higher value that you could offer, but you can also make higher income. Average order value per customer because you have so many things, right? So that speed of money is very different. Sacha: It is, but it's also very dangerous. I know we might talk about cashflow more later, but— Joanna: Let's talk about it now. Managing Cashflow With Multiple Bank Accounts Sacha: Okay, cool. So one of the things that I think is the most valuable thing that I've ever done is, someone who is really clever told me that you're allowed more than one business account. Joanna: Just to be clear, bank accounts? Sacha: Yes, sorry. Yeah. Bank accounts. And one of my banks in particular enables you to have mini banks inside it, mini pots they call it. And what I do with pre-orders is I treat it a bit like Amazon. So that money will come in — you know, I do get paid daily pretty much — but I then siphon it off every week into a pot. So let's just say I've got one book on pre-order. Every week the team tells me how much we've got in pre-orders for that one product and all the shipping money, and I put it into an account and I leave it there. And I do not touch it unless it is to pay for the print run of that book or to pay for the shipping. Because one of the benefits of coming direct to me is that I promise to ship all pre-orders early, so we have to pay the shipping costs before necessarily Amazon might pay for its shipping costs because they only release on the actual release day. But that has enabled me to have a little savings scheme, but also guarantee that I can pay for the print run in advance because I haven't accidentally spent that money on something else or invested it. I've kept it aside and it also helps you track numbers as well, so you know how well that pre-order is doing financially. Understanding Cashflow as an Author Joanna: Yeah. And this cashflow, if people don't really know it, is the difference between when money comes in and when it goes out. So another example, common to many authors, is paying for advertising. So for example, if you run some ads one month, you're going to have to pay, let's say Facebook or BookBub or whoever, that month. You might not get the money from the sale of those books if it's from a store until two months later. In that case, the cash flows the other way. The money is sitting with the store, sitting on Amazon until they pay you later. This idea of cashflow is so important for authors to think about. Another, I guess even more basic example is you are writing your first book and you pay for an editor. Money goes out of your bank account and then hopefully you're going to sell some books, but that might take, let's say six months, and then some money will come back into your bank account. I think this understanding cashflow is so important at a small level because as it gets bigger and bigger — and you are doing these very big print runs now, aren't you? Talk a bit about that. The Risks of Print Runs Sacha: Yeah. So one of the things I was going to say, one of the benefits of your sell direct model is that you don't have to deal with mistakes like this one. So in my recent book, Architecti, that we launched at the end of September, we did a print run of a thousand books, maybe about 3,000 pounds, something like that, 2,000 pounds. And basically we ended up selling all thousand and more. So the pre-orders breached a thousand and we didn't have enough books. But what made that worse is that 20% of the books that arrived were damaged because there had been massive rain. So we then had to do a second print run, which is bad for two reasons. The first reason is that one, that space, two, the time it's going to take to get to you — it's not instant, it's not printed on demand. But also three, I then had to spend the same amount of money again. And actually if we had ordered 2,000 originally, we would've saved a bit more money on it per book. So you don't — if you are doing selling direct with a print on demand model, the number of pre-orders you get is irrelevant because they'll just keep printing, and you just get charged per copy. So there are benefits and disadvantages to doing it each way. Obviously, I'm getting a cheaper price per copy printed, but not if I mess up the order numbers. Is Running a Warehouse Just Another Job? Joanna: So I'm going to come back on something you said earlier, which was in 2022 you said, “I realised I made a job for myself.” Sacha: Yeah. Joanna: And I mean, I've been to your store. You obviously have people to help you. But one of my reservations about this kind of model is that even if you have people to help you, taking on physical book — even though you are not printing them yourself, you're still shipping them all and you're signing them all. And to me it feels like a job. So maybe talk about why you have continued — you have pretty much decided to continue with your warehouse. So why is this not a job? What makes this fun for you? The Joy of Physical Product Creation Sacha: I wish that listeners could see my face because I'm literally glittering. I love it. I literally love it. I love us being able to create cool and wacky things. We can make a decision and we can create that physical product really quickly. We can do all of these quirky things. We can experiment. We can do book boxes. So first of all, it's the creativity in the physical product creation. I had no idea how much I love physical product creation, but there is something extremely satisfying about us coming up with an idea that's so integrated in the book. So for example, one of my characters uses, has a coin, a yes/no coin. She's an assassin and she flips it to decide whether or not she's going to assassinate somebody. We've actually designed and had that coin made, and it's my favourite item in the warehouse. It's such a small little thing, but I love it. And so there is a lot of joy that I derive from us being able to create these items. Sending Book Mail and Building Community Sacha: I think the second thing is I really love book mail. There is no better gift somebody can give me than a book. And so I do get a lot of satisfaction from knowing we're sending out lots and lots of book presents to people and we get to add more to it. So some of the promises that we make are: I sign every book and we give gifts. We have character art and, like I've mentioned before, pop sockets and all these kinds of things. And I get tagged daily in unboxings and stories and things like this where people are like, oh my gosh, I didn't realise I was going to get this, this, and this. And I just — it's like crack to me. I get high off of it. So I can't — this is not for everybody. This is a logistical nightmare. There are so many problems inherent in this business model. I love it. Discovering a Love of Team Building Sacha: And I think the other thing, which is very much not for a lot of authors — I did not realise that I actually really like having a team. And that has been a recent realisation. I really was told that I'm not a team player when I was in corporate, that I work alone, all of this nonsense. And I believed that and taken it on. But finding the right team, the right people who love the jobs that they do inside your business and they're all as passionate as you, is just life changing. And so that also helps me continue because I have a really great team. Joanna: I do have to ask you, what is a pop socket? Sacha: It's a little round disc that has a mechanism that you can pull out and then you — and it has a sticky command strip back and you can pop it on the back of your phone or on the back of a Kindle and it helps you to hold it. I don't know how else to describe it. It just helps you to hold the device easier. Joanna: Okay. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was confused. I'm like, why are you doing electrical socket products? Know What Kind of Person You Are Joanna: But I think this actually does demonstrate another point, and I hope people listening — I hope you can sort of — why we are doing this partly is to help you figure out what kind of person you are as well. Because I can't think of anything worse than having lots of little boxes! And I've been in Sacha's thing and there's all these little stickers and there's lots of boxes of little things that they put in people's packages, which make people happy. And I'm like, oh, I just don't like packages of things. And I mean, you geek out on packaging, don't you as well? Sacha: Oh my goodness. Yeah. One of the first things I did when we got the warehouse was I actually went to a packaging expo in Birmingham. It was like this giant conference place and I just nerded out there. It was so fun. And one of the things that I'm booked to do is an advent calendar. And that was what drove me there in the first place. I was looking for a manufacturer that could create an advent calendar for us. I have two. I'm not — I have two advent calendars this year because I love them so much. But yeah, the other thing that I was going to say to you is I often think that as adults, we can find what we're supposed to do rooted in our childhood. And I was talking the other day and someone said to me, what toy do you remember from your youth? And I was like, oh yeah. The only one that I can remember is that I had a sticker maker. I like — that makes sense. You do like stickers. And I do. Yeah. Digital Minimalism vs Physical Products Joanna: Yeah, I do. And I think this is so important because I love books. I buy a lot of books. I love books, but I also get rid of a lot of books. I know people hate this, but I will just get rid of bags and bags of books. So I value books more for what's inside them than the physical product as such. I mean, I have some big expensive, beautiful books, but mostly I want what's in them. So it's really interesting to me. And I think there's a big difference between us is just how much you like all that stuff. So if you are listening, if you are like a digital minimalist and you don't want to have stuff around your house, you definitely don't want a warehouse. You don't want all the shipping bits and bobs. You are not interested in all that. Or even if you are, you can still do a lot of this print on demand. Then I think that's just so important, isn't it? I mean, did you look at the print on demand merch? Did you find anything you liked? The Draw of Customisation Sacha: Yeah, we did, but I think for me it was that customisation. We are now moving towards — I've just put an order in this morning for 10,000 customised boxes. We've got our own branding on them. We've got a little naughty, cheeky message when they flip up the flap. And it's little things like that that you can't — you know, we wouldn't have control over what was sent. So much of what I wanted, and some of the reasons for me doing it, is that I wanted to be able to sign the books. I was being asked on a daily basis if people could buy signed books from me, and it was driving me bonkers not being able to say yes. But also being able to send a website mailing list sign-up in the box, or being able to give them a discount in the box. I mean, I know you do that, but yeah, there was just a lot more customisation and things that we could do if we were controlling the shipping. Also, I wanted to pack the boxes, the books better. So we wanted to be able to bubble wrap things or we wanted to be able to waterproof things because we had various different issues with deliveries and so we wanted a bit more control over that. So yeah, there were just so many reasons for us to do it. Print on Demand Is Still Fantastic Sacha: Look, don't get me wrong, if I suddenly wanted to go off travelling for a year, then maybe I would shut down the warehouse and go back to print on demand. I think print on demand is fantastic. I did it for 14 months before I decided to open a warehouse. It is the foundation of most authors' models. So it's fantastic. I just want to do more. Joanna: Yeah. You want to do more of it. Life Stage Matters Joanna: We should also, I also wanted to mention your life stage. Because when we did talk about it, your son is just going to secondary school, so we knew that you would be in the same area, right? Sacha: Yeah. Joanna: Because I said to you, you can't just do this and — well, you can, you could ditch it all. But the better decision is to do this for a certain number of years. If you're going to do it, it needs time, right? So you are at that point in your life. Sacha: Yeah, absolutely. We — I mean, we are going to move house, I think, but not that far away. We'll still be in reachable distance of the warehouse. And yeah, the staying power is so important because it's also about raising awareness. You have to train readers to come to you. You have to show them why it's beneficial for them to order directly from you. Growing the Business Year Over Year Sacha: And then you also have to be able to iterate and add more products. Like you were talking earlier about increasing that average order value. And that does come from having more products, but more products does create other issues like space, which may or may not be suffering issues with now. But yeah, so for example, 2024, which was the first real year, I did about 73 and a half thousand British pounds. And then this year, where — as we record this, it's actually the 1st of December — and I'm on 232,000. So from year one to year two, it's a huge difference. And that I do think is about the number of products and the number of things that we have on there. Joanna: And the number of customers. I guess you've also grown your customer base as well. And one of the rules, I guess, in inverted commas, of publishing is that the money is in the backlist. And every time you add to your backlist and every launch, you are selling a lot more of your backlist as well. So I think as time goes on, yeah, you get more books. Kickstarter as an Alternative Joanna: But let's also talk about Kickstarter because I do signed books for my Kickstarters and to me the Kickstarter is like a short-term ability to do the things you are doing regularly. So for example, if you want to do book boxes, you could just do them for a Kickstarter. You don't have to run a warehouse and do it every single day. For example, your last Kickstarter for Ruby Roe made around 150,000 US dollars, which is amazing. Like really fantastic. So just maybe talk about that, any lessons from the Kickstarter specifically, because I feel like most people, for most people listening, they are far more likely to do a Kickstarter than they are to start a warehouse. Pre-Launch Followers Are Critical Sacha: Yeah, so the first thing is even before you start your Kickstarter, the pre-launch follow accounts are critical. So a lot of people think — well, I guess there's a lot of loud noise about all these big numbers about how much people can make on Kickstarter, but actually a lot of it is driven by you, the author, pushing your audience to Kickstarter. So we actually have a formula now. Somebody more intelligent gave this to me, but essentially, based on my own personal campaign data — so this wouldn't necessarily be the same for other people — but based on my campaign data, each pre-launch follower is worth 75 pounds. And then we add on seven grand, for example. So on campaign three, which was the most recent one, I had 1,501 pre-launch followers. And when you times that by 75 and you add on seven grand, it makes more or less exactly what we made on the campaign. And the same formula can be applied to the others. So you need more pre-launch followers than you think you do. And lots of people don't put enough impetus on the marketing beforehand. Almost all of our Kickstarter marketing is beforehand because we drive so many people to that follow button. Early Bird Pricing and Fulfillment Time Sacha: And then the other thing that we do is that we do early bird pricing. So we get the majority of our income on a campaign on day one. I think it was something wild, like 80% this time was on day one, so that's really important. The second thing is it takes so, so very much longer than you think it does to fulfil a campaign, and you must factor in that cost. Because if it's not you fulfilling, you are paying somebody else to fulfil it. And if it is you fulfilling it, you must account for your own time in the pricing of your campaign. And the other thing is that the amount of time it takes to fulfil is directly proportionate to the size of the campaign. That's one thing I did not even compute — the fact that we went from about 56,000 British pounds up to double that, and the time was exponentially more than double. So you do have to think about that. Overseas Printing and Timelines Sacha: The other lesson that we have learned is that overseas printing will drag your timelines out far longer than you think it does. So whatever you think it's going to take you to fulfil, add several months more onto that and put that information in your campaign. And thankfully, we are now only going to be a month delayed, whereas lots of campaigns get up to a year delayed because they don't consider that. Reinvesting Kickstarter Profits Sacha: And then the last thing I think, which was really key for us, is that if you have some profit in the Kickstarter — because not all Kickstarters are actually massively profitable because they either don't account enough for shipping or they don't account enough in the pricing. Thankfully, ours have been profitable, but we've actually reinvested that profit back into buying more stock and more merchandise, which not everybody would want to do if they don't have a warehouse. However, we are stockpiling merchandise and books so that we can do mystery boxes later on down the line. It's probably a year away, but we are buying extra of everything so that we have that in the warehouse. So yeah, depending on what you want to do with your profit, for us it was all about buying more books, basically. Offering Something Exclusive Sacha: I think the other thing to think about is what is it that you are doing that's exclusive to Kickstarter? Because you will get backers on Kickstarter who want that quirky, unique thing that they're not going to be able to get anywhere else. But what about you? Because you've done more Kickstarters than me. What do you think is the biggest lesson you've learned? Reward Tiers and Bundling Joanna: Oh, well I think all of mine together add up to the one you just did. Although I will comment on — you said something like 75 pounds per pre-launch backer. That is obviously dependent on your tiers for the rewards, so most authors won't have that amount. So my average order value, which I know is slightly different, but I don't offer things like book boxes like you have. So a lot of it will depend on the tiers. Some people will do a Kickstarter just with an ebook, just with one ebook and maybe a bundle of ebooks. So you are never going to make it up to that kind of value. So I think this is important too, is have a look at what people offer on their different levels of Kickstarter. And in fact, here's my AI tip for the day. What you can do — what I did with my Buried and the Drowned campaign recently — is I uploaded my book to ChatGPT and said, tell me, what are some ideas for the different reward tiers that I can do on Kickstarter? And it will give you some ideas for what you can do, what kind of bundles you might want to do. So I think bundling your backlist is another thing you can do as upsells, or you can just, for example, for me, when I did Blood Vintage, I did a horror bundle when it was four standalone horror books in one of the upper tiers. So I think bundling is a good way. Also upselling your backlist is a really good way to up things. And also if you do it digitally, so for ebooks and audiobooks, there's a lot less time in fulfillment. Focus on Digital Products Too Joanna: So again, yours — well, you make things hard, but also more fun according to you, because most of it's physical, right? In fact, this is one of the things you haven't done so well, really, is concentrate on the digital side of things. Is that something you are thinking about now? Sacha: Yeah, it is. I mean, we do have our books digitally on the website. So the last — I only had one series in Kindle Unlimited, and I took those out in January. But so we do have all of the digital products on the website, and the novellas that we do, we have in all formats because I narrate the audio for them. So that is something that we're looking at. And since somebody very smart told me to have upsell apps on my website, we now have a full “get the everything bundle” in physical and digital and we are now selling them as well. Surprising. Definitely not you. So yeah, we are looking at it and that's something that we could look at next year as well for advertising because I haven't really done any advertising. I think I've spent about 200 pounds in ads in the last four months or something. It's very, very low level. So that is a way to make a huge amount of profit because the cost is so low. So your return, if you're doing a 40 or 50 pound bundle of ebooks and you are spending, I don't know, four pounds in advertising to get that sale, your return on that investment is enormous for ads. So that is something that we are looking at for next year, but it just hasn't been something that we've done a huge amount of. A Multi-Six-Figure Author With No Ads Joanna: Yeah. Well, just quoting from your solo episode where you say, “I don't have any advertising costs, customers are from my mailing list, TikTok and Instagram.” Now, being as you are a multi-six-figure author with no ads, this is mostly unthinkable for many authors. And so I wonder if, maybe talk about that. How do you think you have done that and can other people potentially emulate it, or do you think it's luck? It's Not Luck, It's Skill Set Sacha: Do you know, this is okay. So I don't think it's luck. I don't believe in luck. I get quite aggressive about people flinging luck around. I know some people are huge supporters of luck. I'm like, no. Do I think anybody can do it? Do you know, I swing so hard on this. Sometimes I say yes, and sometimes I think no. And I think the brutal truth of it is that I know where my skill set lies and I lean extremely heavily into it. So what do I mean by that? TikTok and Instagram are both very visual mediums. It is video footage. It is static images. I am extremely comfortable on camera. I am an ex-theatre kid. I was on TV as a kid. I did voiceover work when I was younger. This is my wheelhouse. So acting a bit like a tit on TikTok on a video, I am very comfortable at doing that, and I think that is reflected in the results. Consistency Without Burnout Sacha: And the other part of it is because I am comfortable at doing it, I enjoy it. It makes me laugh. And therefore it feels easy. And I think because it feels easy, I can do it over and over and over again without burning out. I started posting on TikTok on November the 19th, 2023, and I have posted three times a day every day since. Every single day without stopping, and I do not feel burnt out. And I definitely feel like that is because it's easy for me because I am good at it. Reading the Algorithm Sacha: The other thing that I think goes in here is that I'm very good at reading what's working. So sorry to talk Clifton Strengths, but my number one Clifton Strength is competition. And one of the skills that has is understanding the market. We're very good at having a wide view. So not only do I read the market on Amazon or in bookstores or wherever I can, it's the same skill set but applied to the algorithm. So I am very good at dissecting viral videos and understanding what made it work, in the same way somebody that spends 20,000 pounds a month on Facebook advertising is very good at doing analytics and looking at those numbers. I am useless at that. I just can't do it. I just get complete shutdown. My brain just says no, and I'm incapable of running ads. That's why I don't do it. Not Everyone Can Do This Sacha: So can anybody do this? Maybe. If you are comfortable on camera, if you enjoy it. It's like we've got a mutual friend, Adam Beswick. We call him the QVC Book Bitch because he is a phenomenon on live videos on TikTok and Instagram and wherever he can sell. Anything on those lives. It is astonishing to watch the sales pop in as he's on these lives. I can't think of anything worse. I will do a live, but I'll be signing books and having a good old chitchat. Not like it's — like that hand selling. Another author, Willow Winters, has done like 18 in-person events this year. I literally die on the inside hearing that. But that's what works for them and that's what's helping grow their business models. So ah, honestly, no. I actually don't think anybody can do what I've done. I think if you have a similar skill set to me, then yes you can. But no, and I know that I don't want to crush anybody listening. Do you like social media? I like social media. Do you like being on camera? Then yeah, you can do it. But if you don't, then I just think it's a waste of your time. Find out what you are good at, find out where your skill set is, and then lean in very, very hard. Writing to Your Strengths and Passion Joanna: I also think, because let's be brutal, you had books before and they didn't sell like this. Sacha: Yep. Joanna: So I also think that you leaned into — yes, of course, sapphic romance is a big sub-genre, but you love it. And also it's your lived experience with the sapphic sub-genre. This is not you chasing a trend, right? I think that's important too because too many people are like, oh, well maybe this is the latest trend. And is TikTok a trend? And then try and force them together, whereas I feel like you haven't done that. Sacha: No, and actually I spoke to lots of people who were very knowledgeable on the market and they all said, don't do it. And the reason for this is that there were no adult lesbian sapphic romance books that were selling when I looked at the market and decided that this was what I wanted to write. And I was like, cool, I'm going to do it then. And rightly so, everyone was like, well, there's no evidence to suggest that this is going to make any money. You are taking a huge risk. And I was like, yeah, but I will. I knew from the outset before I even put a word to the page how I was going to market it. And I think that feeling of coming home is what I — I created a home for myself in my books and that is why it's just felt so easy to market. Lean Into What You're Good At Sacha: It's like you, with your podcasting. Nobody can get anywhere near your podcast because you are so good at it. You've got such a history. You are so natural with your podcasting that you are just unbeatable, you know? So it's a natural way for you to market it. Joanna: Many have tried, but no, you're right. It's because I like this. And what's so funny — I'm sure I've mentioned it on the show — but I did call you one day and say, okay, all right, show me how to do this TikTok thing. And you spent like two hours on the phone with me and then I basically said no. Okay. I almost tried and then I just went, no, this is definitely not for me. And I think that this has to be one of the most important things as an author. Maybe some people listening are just geeking out over packaging like you are, and maybe they're the people who might look at this potential business model. Whereas some people are like me and don't want to go anywhere near it. And then other people like you want to do video and maybe other people like me want to do audio. So yeah, it's so important to find, well, like you said, what does not work for you? What is fun for you and when are you having a good time? Because otherwise you would have a job. Like to me, it looks like a job, you having a warehouse. But to you, it's not the same as when you were grinding it out back in 2022. Packing Videos Are Peak Content Sacha: Completely. And I think if you look at my social media feeds, they are disproportionately full of packing videos, which I think tells you something. Joanna: Oh dear. I just literally — I'm just like, oh my, if I never see any more packaging, I'll be happy. Sacha: Yeah. That's good. The One Time Sacha Nearly Burnt It All Down Sacha: I have to say, there was one moment where I doubted everything. And that was at the end — but basically, in about, of really poor timing. I ended up having to fulfil every single pre-order of my latest release and hand packing about a thousand books in two weeks. And I nearly burnt it all to the ground. Joanna: Because you didn't have enough staffing, right? And your mum was sick or something? Sacha: Yeah, exactly that. And I had to do it all by myself, and I was alone in the warehouse and it was just horrendous. So never again. But hey, I learned the lessons and now I'm like, yay, let's do it again. Things Change: Building Resilience Into Your Business Joanna: Yeah. And make sure there's more staffing. Yes, I've talked a lot on this show — things change, right? Things change. And in fact, the episode that just went out today as we record this with Jennifer Probst, which she talked about hitting massive bestseller lists and doing just incredibly well, and then it just dropped off and she had to pivot and change things. And I'm not like Debbie Downer, but I do say things will change. So what are you putting in place to make sure, for example, TikTok finally does disappear or get banned, or that sapphic romance suddenly drops off a cliff? What are you doing to make sure that you can keep going in the future? Managing Cash Flow and Salaries Sacha: Yeah, so I think there's a few things. The first big one is managing cash flow and ensuring that I have three to six months' worth of staff salaries, for want of a better word, in an account. So if the worst thing happens and sales drop off — because I am responsible for other people's income now — that I'm not about to shaft a load of people. So that really helps give you that risk reassurance. Mailing Lists and Marketing Funnels Sacha: The second thing is making sure that we are cultivating our mailing lists, making sure that we are putting in infrastructure, like things like upsell apps. And, okay, so here's a ridiculous lesson that I learned in 2025: an automation sequence, an onboarding automation sequence, is not what people mean when they say you need a marketing funnel. I learned this in Vegas. A marketing funnel will sell your products to your existing readers. So when a customer signs up to your mailing list because they've purchased something, they will be tagged and then your email flow system will then send them a 5% discount on this, or “did you know you could bundle up and get blah?” So putting that kind of stuff in place will mean that we can take more advantage of the customers that we've already got. Standard Operating Procedures Sacha: It's also things like organisational knowledge. My team is big enough now that there are things in my business I don't know how to do. That's quite daunting for somebody who is a control freak. So I visited Vegas in 2025 and I sat in a session all on — this sounds so sexy — but standard operating procedures. And now I've given my team the job of creating a process instruction manual on how they do each of their tasks so that if anybody's sick, somebody else can pick it up. If somebody leaves, we've got that infrastructure in place. And even things down to things like passwords — who, if I unfortunately got hit by a car, who can access my Amazon account? Stuff like that, unfortunately. Joanna: Yeah, I know. Well, I mean, that would be tragic, wouldn't it? Sacha: But it's stuff like that. Building Longer Timelines Sacha: But then also more day-to-day things is putting in infrastructure that pulls me out. So looking more at staffing responsibilities for staffing so that I don't always have to be there, and creating longer timelines. That is probably the most important thing that we can do because we've got a book box launching next summer. And we both had the realisation — I say we, me and my operations manager — had the realisation that actually we ought to be commissioning the cover and the artwork now because of how long those processes take. So I'm a little bit shortsighted on timelines, I think. So putting a bit more rigour in what we do and when. We now have a team-wide heat map where we know when the warehouse is going to be really, really full, when staff are off, when deliveries are coming, and that's projected out a year in advance. So lots and lots of things that are changing. And then I guess also eventually we will do advertising as well. But that is a few months down the line. Personal Financial Resilience Sacha: And then on the more personal side, it's looking at things like not just how you keep the business running, but how do you keep yourself running? How do you make sure that, let's say you have a bad sales month, but you still have to pay your team? How are you going to get paid? So I, as well as having put staff salaries away, I also have my own salary. I've got a few months of my own salary put away. And then investing as well. I know, I am not a financial advisor, but I do invest money. I serve money that I pay myself. You can also do things like having investment vehicles inside your business if you want to deal with extra cash. And then I am taking advice from my accountant and my financial advisor on do I put more money into my pension — because did I say that I also have a pension? So I invest in my future as well. Or do I set up another company and have a property portfolio? Or how do I essentially make the money that is inside the business make more money rather than reinvesting it, spending it, and reinvesting it on things that don't become assets or don't become money generating? What can I do with the cash that's inside the company in order to then make it make more for the long term? Because then if you do have a down six months or worse, a down year, for example, you've got enough cash and equity inside the business to cover you during those lower months or years or weeks — or hopefully just a day. Different Business Models for Different Authors Joanna: Yes, of course. And we all hope it just carries on up and to the right, but sometimes it doesn't work that way. So it's really great that you are doing all those things. And I think what's lovely and why we started off with you giving us that potted history was it hasn't always been this way. So if you are listening to this and you are like, well, I've only got one ebook for sale on Amazon, well that might be all you ever want to do, which is fine. Or you can come to where my business model is, which is mostly even — I use print on demand, but it's mostly digital. It's mostly online. It's got no packaging that I deal with. Or you can go even further like Sacha and Adam Beswick and Willow Winters. But because that is being talked about a lot in the community, that's why we wanted to do this — to really show you that there's different people doing different things and you need to choose what's best for you. What Are You Excited About for 2026? Joanna: But just as we finish, just tell us what are you excited about for 2026? Sacha: Oh my goodness me. I am excited to iterate my craft. And this is completely not related to the warehouse, but I have gotten myself into a position where I get to play with words again. So I'm really excited for the things that I'm going to write. But also in terms of the warehouse, we've got the new packaging, so getting to see those on social media. We are also looking at things like book boxes. So we are doing a set of three book boxes and these are going to be new and bigger and better than anything that we've done before. And custom tailored. Oh, without giving too much away, but items that go inside and also the artwork. I love working with artists and commissioning different art projects. But yeah, basically more of the same, hopefully world domination. Joanna: World domination. Fantastic. So basically more creativity. Sacha: Yeah. Joanna: And also a bigger business. Because I know you are ambitious and I love that. I think it's really good for people to be ambitious. Joanna: Oh, I do have another question. Do you have more sympathy for traditional publishing at this point? Sacha: How dare you? Unfortunately, yeah. I really have learnt the hard way why traditional publishers need the timelines that they need. This latest release was probably the biggest that — so this latest release, which was called Architecting, is the reason that I did the podcast episode, because I learned so many lessons. And in particular about timelines and how tight things get, and it's just not realistic when you are doing this physical business. So that's another thing if you are listening and you are like, oh no, no, no, I like the immediacy of being able to finish, get it back from the editor and hit publish — this ain't for you, honey. This is not for you. Joanna: Yeah. No, that's fantastic. Where to Find Sacha and Ruby Roe Joanna: So where can people find you and your books online? Sacha: For the Ruby Empire, it's RubyRoe.co.uk and RubyRoeAuthor on TikTok if you'd like to see me dancing like a wally. And then Instagram, I'm back as @SachaBlackAuthor on Instagram. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Sacha. That was great. Sacha: Thank you for having me.The post Two Different Approaches To Selling Books Direct With Sacha Black And Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you write science-based fiction without info-dumping your research? How can you use AI tools in a creative way, while still focusing on a human-first approach? Why is adapting to the fast pace of change so difficult and how can we make the most of this time? Jamie Metzl talks about Superconvergence and more. In the intro, How to avoid author scams [Written Word Media]; Spotify vs Audible audiobook strategy [The New Publishing Standard]; Thoughts on Author Nation and why constraints are important in your author life [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; Alchemical History And Beautiful Architecture: Prague with Lisa M Lilly on my Books and Travel Podcast. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jamie Metzl is a technology futurist, professional speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of sci-fi thrillers and futurist nonfiction books, including the revised and updated edition of Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How personal history shaped Jamie's fiction writing Writing science-based fiction without info-dumping The super convergence of three revolutions (genetics, biotech, AI) and why we need to understand them holistically Using fiction to explore the human side of genetic engineering, life extension, and robotics Collaborating with GPT-5 as a named co-author How to be a first-rate human rather than a second-rate machine You can find Jamie at JamieMetzl.com. Transcript of interview with Jamie Metzl Jo: Jamie Metzl is a technology futurist, professional speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of sci-fi thrillers and futurist nonfiction books, including the revised and updated edition of Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World. So welcome, Jamie. Jamie: Thank you so much, Jo. Very happy to be here with you. Jo: There is so much we could talk about, but let's start with you telling us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. From History PhD to First Novel Jamie: Well, I think like a lot of writers, I didn't know I was a writer. I was just a kid who loved writing. Actually, just last week I was going through a bunch of boxes from my parents' house and I found my autobiography, which I wrote when I was nine years old. So I've been writing my whole life and loving it. It was always something that was very important to me. When I finished my DPhil, my PhD at Oxford, and my dissertation came out, it just got scooped up by Macmillan in like two minutes. And I thought, “God, that was easy.” That got me started thinking about writing books. I wanted to write a novel based on the same historical period – my PhD was in Southeast Asian history – and I wanted to write a historical novel set in the same period as my dissertation, because I felt like the dissertation had missed the human element of the story I was telling, which was related to the Cambodian genocide and its aftermath. So I wrote what became my first novel, and I thought, “Wow, now I'm a writer.” I thought, “All right, I've already published one book. I'm gonna get this other book out into the world.” And then I ran into the brick wall of: it's really hard to be a writer. It's almost easier to write something than to get it published. I had to learn a ton, and it took nine years from when I started writing that first novel, The Depths of the Sea, to when it finally came out. But it was such a positive experience, especially to have something so personal to me as that story. I'd lived in Cambodia for two years, I'd worked on the Thai-Cambodian border, and I'm the child of a Holocaust survivor. So there was a whole lot that was very emotional for me. That set a pattern for the rest of my life as a writer, at least where, in my nonfiction books, I'm thinking about whatever the issues are that are most important to me. Whether it was that historical book, which was my first book, or Hacking Darwin on the future of human genetic engineering, which was my last book, or Superconvergence, which, as you mentioned in the intro, is my current book. But in every one of those stories, the human element is so deep and so profound. You can get at some of that in nonfiction, but I've also loved exploring those issues in deeper ways in my fiction. So in my more recent novels, Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata, I've looked at the human side of the story of genetic engineering and human life extension. And now my agent has just submitted my new novel, Virtuoso, about the intersection of AI, robotics, and classical music. With all of this, who knows what's the real difference between fiction and nonfiction? We're all humans trying to figure things out on many different levels. Shifting from History to Future Tech Jo: I knew that you were a polymath, someone who's interested in so many things, but the music angle with robotics and AI is fascinating. I do just want to ask you, because I was also at Oxford – what college were you at? Jamie: I was in St. Antony's. Jo: I was at Mansfield, so we were in that slightly smaller, less famous college group, if people don't know. Jamie: You know, but we're small but proud. Jo: Exactly. That's fantastic. You mentioned that you were on the historical side of things at the beginning and now you've moved into technology and also science, because this book Superconvergence has a lot of science. So how did you go from history and the past into science and the future? Biology and Seeing the Future Coming Jamie: It's a great question. I'll start at the end and then back up. A few years ago I was speaking at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is one of the big scientific labs here in the United States. I was a guest of the director and I was speaking to their 300 top scientists. I said to them, “I'm here to speak with you about the future of biology at the invitation of your director, and I'm really excited. But if you hear something wrong, please raise your hand and let me know, because I'm entirely self-taught. The last biology course I took was in 11th grade of high school in Kansas City.” Of course I wouldn't say that if I didn't have a lot of confidence in my process. But in many ways I'm self-taught in the sciences. As you know, Jo, and as all of your listeners know, the foundation of everything is curiosity and then a disciplined process for learning. Even our greatest super-specialists in the world now – whatever their background – the world is changing so fast that if anyone says, “Oh, I have a PhD in physics/chemistry/biology from 30 years ago,” the exact topic they learned 30 years ago is less significant than their process for continuous learning. More specifically, in the 1990s I was working on the National Security Council for President Clinton, which is the president's foreign policy staff. My then boss and now close friend, Richard Clarke – who became famous as the guy who had tragically predicted 9/11 – used to say that the key to efficacy in Washington and in life is to try to solve problems that other people can't see. For me, almost 30 years ago, I felt to my bones that this intersection of what we now call AI and the nascent genetics revolution and the nascent biotechnology revolution was going to have profound implications for humanity. So I just started obsessively educating myself. When I was ready, I started writing obscure national security articles. Those got a decent amount of attention, so I was invited to testify before the United States Congress. I was speaking out a lot, saying, “Hey, this is a really important story. A lot of people are missing it. Here are the things we should be thinking about for the future.” I wasn't getting the kind of traction that I wanted. I mentioned before that my first book had been this dry Oxford PhD dissertation, and that had led to my first novel. So I thought, why don't I try the same approach again – writing novels to tell this story about the genetics, biotech, and what later became known popularly as the AI revolution? That led to my two near-term sci-fi novels, Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata. On my book tours for those novels, when I explained the underlying science to people in my way, as someone who taught myself, I could see in their eyes that they were recognizing not just that something big was happening, but that they could understand it and feel like they were part of that story. That's what led me to write Hacking Darwin, as I mentioned. That book really unlocked a lot of things. I had essentially predicted the CRISPR babies that were born in China before it happened – down to the specific gene I thought would be targeted, which in fact was the case. After that book was published, Dr. Tedros, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, invited me to join the WHO Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing, which I did. It was a really great experience and got me thinking a lot about the upside of this revolution and the downside. The Birth of Superconvergence Jamie: I get a lot of wonderful invitations to speak, and I have two basic rules for speaking: Never use notes. Never ever. Never stand behind a podium. Never ever. Because of that, when I speak, my talks tend to migrate. I'd be speaking with people about the genetics revolution as it applied to humans, and I'd say, “Well, this is just a little piece of a much bigger story.” The bigger story is that after nearly four billion years of life on Earth, our one species has the increasing ability to engineer novel intelligence and re-engineer life. The big question for us, and frankly for the world, is whether we're going to be able to use that almost godlike superpower wisely. As that idea got bigger and bigger, it became this inevitable force. You write so many books, Jo, that I think it's second nature for you. Every time I finish a book, I think, “Wow, that was really hard. I'm never doing that again.” And then the books creep up on you. They call to you. At some point you say, “All right, now I'm going to do it.” So that was my current book, Superconvergence. Like everything, every journey you take a step, and that step inspires another step and another. That's why writing and living creatively is such a wonderfully exciting thing – there's always more to learn and always great opportunities to push ourselves in new ways. Balancing Deep Research with Good Storytelling Jo: Yeah, absolutely. I love that you've followed your curiosity and then done this disciplined process for learning. I completely understand that. But one of the big issues with people like us who love the research – and having read your Superconvergence, I know how deeply you go into this and how deeply you care that it's correct – is that with fiction, one of the big problems with too much research is the danger of brain-dumping. Readers go to fiction for escapism. They want the interesting side of it, but they want a story first. What are your tips for authors who might feel like, “Where's the line between putting in my research so that it's interesting for readers, but not going too far and turning it into a textbook?” How do you find that balance? Jamie: It's such a great question. I live in New York now, but I used to live in Washington when I was working for the U.S. government, and there were a number of people I served with who later wrote novels. Some of those novels felt like policy memos with a few sex scenes – and that's not what to do. To write something that's informed by science or really by anything, everything needs to be subservient to the story and the characters. The question is: what is the essential piece of information that can convey something that's both important to your story and your character development, and is also an accurate representation of the world as you want it to be? I certainly write novels that are set in the future – although some of them were a future that's now already happened because I wrote them a long time ago. You can make stuff up, but as an author you have to decide what your connection to existing science and existing technology and the existing world is going to be. I come at it from two angles. One: I read a huge number of scientific papers and think, “What does this mean for now, and if you extrapolate into the future, where might that go?” Two: I think about how to condense things. We've all read books where you're humming along because people read fiction for story and emotional connection, and then you hit a bit like: “I sat down in front of the president, and the president said, ‘Tell me what I need to know about the nuclear threat.'” And then it's like: insert memo. That's a deal-killer. It's like all things – how do you have a meaningful relationship with another person? It's not by just telling them your story. Even when you're telling them something about you, you need to be imagining yourself sitting in their shoes, hearing you. These are very different disciplines, fiction and nonfiction. But for the speculative nonfiction I write – “here's where things are now, and here's where the world is heading” – there's a lot of imagination that goes into that too. It feels in many ways like we're living in a sci-fi world because the rate of technological change has been accelerating continuously, certainly for the last 12,000 years since the dawn of agriculture. It's a balance. For me, I feel like I'm a better fiction writer because I write nonfiction, and I'm a better nonfiction writer because I write fiction. When I'm writing nonfiction, I don't want it to be boring either – I want people to feel like there's a story and characters and that they can feel themselves inside that story. Jo: Yeah, definitely. I think having some distance helps as well. If you're really deep into your topics, as you are, you have to leave that manuscript a little bit so you can go back with the eyes of the reader as opposed to your eyes as the expert. Then you can get their experience, which is great. Looking Beyond Author-Focused AI Fears Jo: I want to come to your technical knowledge, because AI is a big thing in the author and creative community, like everywhere else. One of the issues is that creators are focusing on just this tiny part of the impact of AI, and there's a much bigger picture. For example, in 2024, Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind and his collaborative partner John Jumper won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with AlphaFold. It feels to me like there's this massive world of what's happening with AI in health, climate, and other areas, and yet we are so focused on a lot of the negative stuff. Maybe you could give us a couple of things about what there is to be excited and optimistic about in terms of AI-powered science? Jamie: Sure. I'm so excited about all of the new opportunities that AI creates. But I also think there's a reason why evolution has preserved this very human feeling of anxiety: because there are real dangers. Anybody who's Pollyanna-ish and says, “Oh, the AI story is inevitably positive,” I'd be distrustful. And anyone who says, “We're absolutely doomed, this is the end of humanity,” I'd also be distrustful. So let me tell you the positives and the negatives, and maybe some thoughts about how we navigate toward the former and away from the latter. AI as the New Electricity Jamie: When people think of AI right now, they're thinking very narrowly about these AI tools and ChatGPT. But we don't think of electricity that way. Nobody says, “I know electricity – electricity is what happens at the power station.” We've internalised the idea that electricity is woven into not just our communication systems or our houses, but into our clothes, our glasses – it's woven into everything and has super-empowered almost everything in our modern lives. That's what AI is. In Superconvergence, the majority of the book is about positive opportunities: In healthcare, moving from generalised healthcare based on population averages to personalised or precision healthcare based on a molecular understanding of each person's individual biology. As we build these massive datasets like the UK Biobank, we can take a next jump toward predictive and preventive healthcare, where we're able to address health issues far earlier in the process, when interventions can be far more benign. I'm really excited about that, not to mention the incredible new kinds of treatments – gene therapies, or pharmaceuticals based on genetics and systems-biology analyses of patients. Then there's agriculture. Over the last hundred years, because of the technologies of the Green Revolution and synthetic fertilisers, we've had an incredible increase in agricultural productivity. That's what's allowed us to quadruple the global population. But if we just continue agriculture as it is, as we get towards ten billion wealthier, more empowered people wanting to eat like we eat, we're going to have to wipe out all the wild spaces on Earth to feed them. These technologies help provide different paths toward increasing agricultural productivity with fewer inputs of land, water, fertiliser, insecticides, and pesticides. That's really positive. I could go on and on about these positives – and I do – but there are very real negatives. I was a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing after the first CRISPR babies were very unethically created in China. I'm extremely aware that these same capabilities have potentially incredible upsides and very real downsides. That's the same as every technology in the past, but this is happening so quickly that it's triggering a lot of anxieties. Governance, Responsibility, and Why Everyone Has a Role Jamie: The question now is: how do we optimise the benefits and minimise the harms? The short, unsexy word for that is governance. Governance is not just what governments do; it's what all of us do. That's why I try to write books, both fiction and nonfiction, to bring people into this story. If people “other” this story – if they say, “There's a technology revolution, it has nothing to do with me, I'm going to keep my head down” – I think that's dangerous. The way we're going to handle this as responsibly as possible is if everybody says, “I have some role. Maybe it's small, maybe it's big. The first step is I need to educate myself. Then I need to have conversations with people around me. I need to express my desires, wishes, and thoughts – with political leaders, organisations I'm part of, businesses.” That has to happen at every level. You're in the UK – you know the anti-slavery movement started with a handful of people in Cambridge and grew into a global movement. I really believe in the power of ideas, but ideas don't spread on their own. These are very human networks, and that's why writing, speaking, communicating – probably for every single person listening to this podcast – is so important. Jo: Mm, yeah. Fiction Like AI 2041 and Thinking Through the Issues Jo: Have you read AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan? Jamie: No. I heard a bunch of their interviews when the book came out, but I haven't read it. Jo: I think that's another good one because it's fiction – a whole load of short stories. It came out a few years ago now, but the issues they cover in the stories, about different people in different countries – I remember one about deepfakes – make you think more about the topics and help you figure out where you stand. I think that's the issue right now: it's so complex, there are so many things. I'm generally positive about AI, but of course I don't want autonomous drone weapons, you know? The Messy Reality of “Bad” Technologies Jamie: Can I ask you about that? Because this is why it's so complicated. Like you, I think nobody wants autonomous killer drones anywhere in the world. But if you right now were the defence minister of Ukraine, and your children are being kidnapped, your country is being destroyed, you're fighting for your survival, you're getting attacked every night – and you're getting attacked by the Russians, who are investing more and more in autonomous killer robots – you kind of have two choices. You can say, “I'm going to surrender,” or, “I'm going to use what technology I have available to defend myself, and hopefully fight to either victory or some kind of stand-off.” That's what our societies did with nuclear weapons. Maybe not every American recognises that Churchill gave Britain's nuclear secrets to America as a way of greasing the wheels of the Anglo-American alliance during the Second World War – but that was our programme: we couldn't afford to lose that war, and we couldn't afford to let the Nazis get nuclear weapons before we did. So there's the abstract feeling of, “I'm against all war in the abstract. I'm against autonomous killer robots in the abstract.” But if I were the defence minister of Ukraine, I would say, “What will it take for us to build the weapons we can use to defend ourselves?” That's why all this stuff gets so complicated. And frankly, it's why the relationship between fiction and nonfiction is so important. If every novel had a situation where every character said, “Oh, I know exactly the right answer,” and then they just did the right answer and it was obviously right, it wouldn't make for great fiction. We're dealing with really complex humans. We have conflicting impulses. We're not perfect. Maybe there are no perfect answers – but how do we strive toward better rather than worse? That's the question. Jo: Absolutely. I don't want to get too political on things. How AI Is Changing the Writing Life Jo: Let's come back to authors. In terms of the creative process, the writing process, the research process, and the business of being an author – what are some of the ways that you already use AI tools, and some of the ways, given your futurist brain, that you think things are going to change for us? Jamie: Great question. I'll start with a little middle piece. I found you, Jo, through GPT-5. I asked ChatGPT, “I'm coming out with this book and I want to connect with podcasters who are a little different from the ones I've done in the past. I've been a guest on Joe Rogan twice and some of the bigger podcasts. Make me a list of really interesting people I can have great conversations with.” That's how I found you. So this is one reward of that process. Let me say that in the last year I've worked on three books, and I'll explain how my relationship with AI has changed over those books. Cleaning Up Citations (and Getting Burned) Jamie: First is the highly revised paperback edition of Superconvergence. When the hardback came out, I had – I don't normally work with research assistants because I like to dig into everything myself – but the one thing I do use a research assistant for is that I can't be bothered, when I'm writing something, to do the full Chicago-style footnote if I'm already referencing an academic paper. So I'd just put the URL as the footnote and then hire a research assistant and say, “Go to this URL and change it into a Chicago-style citation. That's it.” Unfortunately, my research assistant on the hardback used early-days ChatGPT for that work. He did the whole thing, came back, everything looked perfect. I said, “Wow, amazing job.” It was only later, as I was going through them, that I realised something like 50% of them were invented footnotes. It was very painful to go back and fix, and it took ten times more time. With the paperback edition, I didn't use AI that much, but I did say things like, “Here's all the information – generate a Chicago-style citation.” That was better. I noticed there were a few things where I stopped using the thesaurus function on Microsoft Word because I'd just put the whole paragraph into the AI and say, “Give me ten other options for this one word,” and it would be like a contextual thesaurus. That was pretty good. Talking to a Robot Pianist Character Jamie: Then, for my new novel Virtuoso, I was writing a character who is a futurist robot that plays the piano very beautifully – not just humanly, but almost finding new things in the music we've written and composing music that resonates with us. I described the actions of that robot in the novel, but I didn't describe the inner workings of the robot's mind. In thinking about that character, I realised I was the first science-fiction writer in history who could interrogate a machine about what it was “thinking” in a particular context. I had the most beautiful conversations with ChatGPT, where I would give scenarios and ask, “What are you thinking? What are you feeling in this context?” It was all background for that character, but it was truly profound. Co-Authoring The AI Ten Commandments with GPT-5 Jamie: Third, I have another book coming out in May in the United States. I gave a talk this summer at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York about AI and spirituality. I talked about the history of our human relationship with our technology, about how all our religious and spiritual traditions have deep technological underpinnings – certainly our Abrahamic religions are deeply connected to farming, and Protestantism to the printing press. Then I had a section about the role of AI in generating moral codes that would resonate with humans. Everybody went nuts for this talk, and I thought, “I think I'm going to write a book.” I decided to write it differently, with GPT-5 as my named co-author. The first thing I did was outline the entire book based on the talk, which I'd already spent a huge amount of time thinking about and organising. Then I did a full outline of the arguments and structures. Then I trained GPT-5 on my writing style. The way I did it – which I fully describe in the introduction to the book – was that I'd handle all the framing: the full introduction, the argument, the structure. But if there was a section where, for a few paragraphs, I was summarising a huge field of data, even something I knew well, I'd give GPT-5 the intro sentence and say, “In my writing style, prepare four paragraphs on this.” For example, I might write: “AI has the potential to see us humans like we humans see ant colonies.” Then I'd say, “Give me four paragraphs on the relationship between the individual and the collective in ant colonies.” I could have written those four paragraphs myself, but it would've taken a month to read the life's work of E.O. Wilson and then write them. GPT-5 wrote them in seconds or minutes, in its thinking mode. I'd then say, “It's not quite right – change this, change that,” and we'd go back and forth three or four times. Then I'd edit the whole thing and put it into the text. So this book that I could have written on my own in a year, I wrote a first draft of with GPT-5 as my named co-author in two days. The whole project will take about six months from start to finish, and I'm having massive human editing – multiple edits from me, plus a professional editor. It's not a magic AI button. But I feel strongly about listing GPT-5 as a co-author because I've written it differently than previous books. I'm a huge believer in the old-fashioned lone author struggling and suffering – that's in my novels, and in Virtuoso I explore that. But other forms are going to emerge, just like video games are a creative, artistic form deeply connected to technology. The novel hasn't been around forever – the current format is only a few centuries old – and forms are always changing. There are real opportunities for authors, and there will be so much crap flooding the market because everybody can write something and put it up on Amazon. But I think there will be a very special place for thoughtful human authors who have an idea of what humans do at our best, and who translate that into content other humans can enjoy. Traditional vs Indie: Why This Book Will Be Self-Published Jo: I'm interested – you mentioned that it's your named co-author. Is this book going through a traditional publisher, and what do they think about that? Or are you going to publish it yourself? Jamie: It's such a smart question. What I found quickly is that when you get to be an author later in your career, you have all the infrastructure – a track record, a fantastic agent, all of that. But there were two things that were really important to me here: I wanted to get this book out really fast – six months instead of a year and a half. It was essential to me to have GPT-5 listed as my co-author, because if it were just my name, I feel like it would be dishonest. Readers who are used to reading my books – I didn't want to present something different than what it was. I spoke with my agent, who I absolutely love, and she said that for this particular project it was going to be really hard in traditional publishing. So I did a huge amount of research, because I'd never done anything in the self-publishing world before. I looked at different models. There was one hybrid model that's basically the same as traditional, but you pay for the things the publisher would normally pay for. I ended up not doing that. Instead, I decided on a self-publishing route where I disaggregated the publishing process. I found three teams: one for producing the book, one for getting the book out into the world, and a smaller one for the audiobook. I still believe in traditional publishing – there's a lot of wonderful human value-add. But some works just don't lend themselves to traditional publishing. For this book, which is called The AI Ten Commandments, that's the path I've chosen. Jo: And when's that out? I think people will be interested. Jamie: April 26th. Those of us used to traditional publishing think, “I've finished the book, sold the proposal, it'll be out any day now,” and then it can be a year and a half. It's frustrating. With this, the process can be much faster because it's possible to control more of the variables. But the key – as I was saying – is to make sure it's as good a book as everything else you've written. It's great to speed up, but you don't want to compromise on quality. The Coming Flood of Excellent AI-Generated Work Jo: Yeah, absolutely. We're almost out of time, but I want to come back to your “flood of crap” and the “AI slop” idea that's going around. Because you are working with GPT-5 – and I do as well, and I work with Claude and Gemini – and right now there are still issues. Like you said about referencing, there are still hallucinations, though fewer. But fast-forward two, five years: it's not a flood of crap. It's a flood of excellent. It's a flood of stuff that's better than us. Jamie: We're humans. It's better than us in certain ways. If you have farm machinery, it's better than us at certain aspects of farming. I'm a true humanist. I think there will be lots of things machines do better than us, but there will be tons of things we do better than them. There's a reason humans still care about chess, even though machines can beat humans at chess. Some people are saying things I fully disagree with, like this concept of AGI – artificial general intelligence – where machines do everything better than humans. I've summarised my position in seven letters: “AGI is BS.” The only way you can believe in AGI in that sense is if your concept of what a human is and what a human mind is is so narrow that you think it's just a narrow range of analytical skills. We are so much more than that. Humans represent almost four billion years of embodied evolution. There's so much about ourselves that we don't know. As incredible as these machines are and will become, there will always be wonderful things humans can do that are different from machines. What I always tell people is: whatever you're doing, don't be a second-rate machine. Be a first-rate human. If you're doing something and a machine is doing that thing much better than you, then shift to something where your unique capacities as a human give you the opportunity to do something better. So yes, I totally agree that the quality of AI-generated stuff will get better. But I think the most creative and successful humans will be the ones who say, “I recognise that this is creating new opportunities, and I'm going to insert my core humanity to do something magical and new.” People are “othering” these technologies, but the technologies themselves are magnificent human-generated artefacts. They're not alien UFOs that landed here. It's a scary moment for creatives, no doubt, because there are things all of us did in the past that machines can now do really well. But this is the moment where the most creative people ask themselves, “What does it mean for me to be a great human?” The pat answers won't apply. In my Virtuoso novel I explore that a lot. The idea that “machines don't do creativity” – they will do incredible creativity; it just won't be exactly human creativity. We will be potentially huge beneficiaries of these capabilities, but we really have to believe in and invest in the magic of our core humanity. Where to Find Jamie and His Books Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and your books online? Jamie: Thank you so much for asking. My website is jamiemetzl.com – and my books are available everywhere. Jo: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Jamie. That was great. Jamie: Thank you, Joanna.The post Writing The Future, And Being More Human In An Age of AI With Jamie Metzl first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Big changes are hitting the publishing world. Amazon's new algorithm is shaking up book rankings, libraries are adjusting after Baker & Taylor's collapse, and Spotify's audiobook listeners just jumped 36%. I'll also cover new scams every author should know about, a wild mayo-scented book promotion, and how you can shape the future of indie publishing through this year's Written Word Media survey. Tune in for all the latest updates. LAST CALL: The Final 3 Kickstarter - https://DaleLinks.com/Kickstarter  Jane Friedman's The Bottom Line - https://janefriedman.com/the-bottom-line-janes-publishing-industry-newsletter/  The Hidden Rules of Amazon: A Smart Guide for Self-Publishing Authors - https://wiki.authornation.live/The-Hidden-Rules-of-Amazon-A-Smart-Guide-for-Self-Publishing-Authors-217762f8793a806b9109d5858e911e36  Massive Amazon Algorithm Changes - https://www.authormedia.com/massive-amazon-algorithm-changes/   Libraries Look to Fill the Gap Left by Baker & Taylor - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/98808-libraries-look-to-fill-the-gap-left-by-baker-taylor.html  Spotify's Audiobook Listeners Grew 36% in Second Year of Service - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-14/spotify-s-audiobook-listeners-grew-36-in-second-year-of-service  Writer Beware: Army of Bots: Deeper Into the Vortex of Nigerian Marketing Scams - https://writerbeware.blog/2025/10/20/army-of-bots-deeper-into-the-vortex-of-nigerian-marketing-scams/   Laterpress - https://Laterpress.com  The Guardian: A book is being marketed with mayo-scented ink. Jealous? Me? - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/10/books-marketing-tiktok-publishing  Written Word Media: 2025 Author Survey - https://writtenwordmedia.typeform.com/authorsurvey25  Apple Books for Authors: Holiday season delivery schedule. - https://authors.apple.com  CraveBooks - https://DaleLinks.com/CraveBooks (affiliate link) Kindlepreneur: Authorpreneur Academy - https://academy.kindlepreneur.com/  StoryOrigin: Mastering Self-Publishing: From Novice to Pro (register for the replay) - https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/mCWvXho_QwGFXcvN6PVe9A#/registration  Miblart: Book Marketing Trends 2026 | What Every Indie Author Should Know - https://www.youtube.com/live/QGTfiBW0DfM?si=Ym2nn7NGrJiOVeJh Subscribe to The Self-Publishing Hub - https://TheSelfPublishingHub.com Subscribe to my email newsletter - https://DaleLinks.com/SignUp Join Channel Memberships - https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships Join Me on Discord - https://DaleLinks.com/Discord Check out my main YouTube channel  - https://www.youtube.com/@dalelroberts My Books - https://DaleLinks.com/MyBooks Wanna tip me? Visit https://dalelroberts.gumroad.com/coffee. Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts  

Have you optimized the seven essential elements of your Amazon book page before you even consider marketing? Are you making the most of A+ content, and advertising with Amazon? Amazon Ads expert Geoff Affleck gives his tips. In the intro, potential TikTok US changes [BBC]; Special editions [Written Word Media]; Self-Publishing with Dale Kickstarter books; […] The post Amazon Advertising For Books With Geoff Affleck first appeared on The Creative Penn.

If your book promotions aren't working, it might be time to level up. Emma Boyer of Written Word Media returns to reveal what top authors are doing differently—and how you can apply those strategies in 2025. From advanced promo timing to new reader trends, we're digging into what actually works right now to sell more books. Written Word Media - http://writtenwordmedia.com/ Subscribe to The Self-Publishing Hub - https://TheSelfPublishingHub.com Subscribe to my email newsletter - https://DaleLinks.com/SignUp Join Channel Memberships - https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships Join Me on Discord - https://DaleLinks.com/Discord Check out my main YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@DaleLRoberts My Books - https://DaleLinks.com/MyBooks Wanna tip me? Visit https://dalelroberts.gumroad.com/coffee. Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

Is your book marketing strategy helping you grow—or wasting your budget? In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, Dale L. Roberts talks with Emma Boyer, VP of Digital Operations at Written Word Media, about what truly drives successful book promotions. They explore why branding matters, how genre impacts performance, and why waiting to market your book might be the biggest mistake you make. Emma shares actionable strategies around email list building, pricing expectations, and leveraging promotions to boost visibility and connect with readers—whether you have one book or a full backlist. Sponsor This podcast is proudly sponsored by Bookvault. Sell high-quality, print-on-demand books directly to readers worldwide and earn maximum royalties selling directly. Automate fulfillment and create stunning special editions with BookvaultBespoke. Visit Bookvault.app today for an instant quote. About the Host Dale L. Roberts is a self-publishing advocate, award-winning author, and video content creator. Dale's inherent passion for life fuels his self-publishing advocacy both in print and online. After publishing over 50 titles and becoming an international bestselling author on Amazon, Dale started his YouTube channel, Self-Publishing with Dale. Selected by Feedspot and LA Weekly as one of the best sources in self-publishing of 2022, Dale cemented his position as the indie-author community's go-to authority. You can find Dale on his website or YouTube. About the Guest Emma Boyer is the Vice President of Digital Operations at Written Word Media, where she is responsible for overseeing the company's digital initiatives and operations. Prior to her current role, she served as the Director of Digital Operations at the same organization. Boyer holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the State University of New York College at Geneseo.

Big changes are coming fast for indie authors. KDP is slashing royalties for print books under $9.99 starting next week. Meanwhile, Publisher Rocket is ending its lifetime license—soon, it'll be monthly only. Plus, Spotify for Authors is moving features over from Findaway Voices and confirming promo code honors. Here's what you need to know. Book Award Pro - https://DaleLinks.com/BookAwardPro (affiliate link) Subscribe to The Self-Publishing Hub - https://TheSelfPublishingHub.com Subscribe to my email newsletter - https://DaleLinks.com/SignUp Join Channel Memberships - https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships Join Me on Discord - https://DaleLinks.com/Discord Check out my main YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@DaleLRoberts My Books - https://DaleLinks.com/MyBooks Wanna tip me? Visit https://dalelroberts.gumroad.com/coffee. Sources: How to Get Amazon Book Reviews Without Breaking the Rules - https://bookawardpro.com/blog/how-to-get-amazon-book-reviews-without-breaking-the-rules/ Publisher Rocket SALE - https://rocket.thrivecart.com/special-publisher-rocket/?affiliate=selfpubwithdale (affiliate link) KDP: Print Royalty Rate and Paperback Printing Cost Changes FAQ - https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GXFPA52P6ZJD2U3N?ref_=pe_93986420_1235824880 Spotify for Authors - https://authors.spotify.com/ Apple Books accepts accessibility metadata tags - https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/support/12-metadata Written Word Media presents: The YouTube Author Blueprint: From Zero to Growing Reader Community - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/speaker-series/ ARC: YouTube for Authors - https://DaleLinks.com/ARCTeam  Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

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Bestselling authors William and Lara Bernhardt discuss the latest news from the book world, offer writing tips, and interview Marty Ludlum, author of the new mystery novel, At First I Was Afraid, the first book in his Disco Divas series.(0:00) Opening ThoughtsDo you listen to music while you write?(3:34) Newsa. Amazon is Shuttering the Vella Program for Serialized Fictionb. Written Word Media 2024 Survey Reveals Surprises(15:39) Craft CornerLara Bernhardt discusses how and why to add evocative imagery to your work.(18:02) Interview with Marty Ludlum, author of At First I Was AfraidIn this interview you will learn:a. why Marty has been working on this book for almost thirty years;b. where he got the idea for his protagonist, Donna Summer Wyznecki;c. the importance of the Disco Divas;d. how he benefitted from a WriterCon cruise; and e. why this is the right book to read now.(37:20) Parting WordsRegister now for the WriterCon cruise! The cruise departs from Seattle on May 31 for a week through gorgeous Alaska. Over 20 hours of writing instruction—large group, small group, and private—while the ship is at sea. Prices vary depending upon the roon you choose. For more information, visit www.writercon.com/cruise/ or email willbern@gmail.comUntil next time, keep writing, and remember: You cannot fail, if you refuse to quit.William Bernhardtwww.williambernhardt.comwww.writercon.com

What is dark tourism and why are many of us interested in places associated with death and tragedy? How can you write and self-publish a premium print guidebook while managing complicated design elements, image permissions, and more? With Leon Mcanally. In the intro, level up with author assistants [Written Word Media]; and Blood Vintage signing […] The post Dark Tourism And Self-Publishing Premium Print Books With Images With Leon Mcanally first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Episode 244 / Is it too late to plan holiday promotions? Nope. You still have plenty of time–and holiday promotions don't have to be complicated or time-consuming. We delve into what tactics we've used and found effective for marketing to cold, warm, and hot audiences. -What we wish we'd known about marketing during the holidays -Group promos ideas -> warm/cold audience-Solo promo ideas -> hot audienceBookish Wish List – your favorite books/bookish thingshttps://www.sararosett.com/bookish-wish-list/Mystery Lover's Gift Guide: https://www.sararosett.com/gift-guide/-Last Minute ideas -> cold and warm audiences-Newsletter content ideas -> hot audience 

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing dropped two prominent features on their platform, one of which being Kindle Vella. Written Word Media published their findings in a recent indie author survey. The guys at Hidden Gems Books shared a recent post about how well AI-generated art faired against stock images for promoting books on Facebook. The findings are interesting to say the least. All that and more in the self-publishing news this week! - Book Award Pro - https://DaleLinks.com/BookAwardPro (affiliate link)

What are some of the key elements in writing horror? How can you be successful writing and self-publishing in the genre? With Boris Bacic. In the intro, ISBNs made easy [Self-publishing Advice]; Written Word Media's 2024 author survey; Taylor Swift self-publishing [Morning Brew]; Thoughts on audiobooks [Seth Godin]; This is Strategy: Make Better Plans – […] The post Writing Horror With Boris Bacic first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you be successful at connecting with readers and selling books at live, in-person events? What are some practical tips as well as mindset shifts that can help you make the most of the opportunities? Mark Leslie Lefebvre shares his experience. In the intro, Beventi for author events, Reader survey results [Written Word Media]; […] The post Selling Books In Person At Live Events With Mark Lefebvre first appeared on The Creative Penn.

This episode of the Six Figure Author Experiment podcast focuses on post-launch strategies and marketing techniques for indie authors, featuring a detailed discussion with guest Mike from Written Word Media. The conversation explores the effectiveness of various advertising strategies, including the use of Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon ads, with an emphasis on the importance of testing different ad creatives and understanding the nuances of different platforms.Key Discussion Points:* Post-Launch Reflection:* Russell reflects on his recent book launch, noting that despite a detailed pre-launch plan, he executed minimal promotional activities aside from running Facebook and Amazon ads and sending a few emails. The discussion highlights the importance of post-launch analysis to understand what worked and what didn't.* Advertising Strategies:* Mike explains the benefits of using Written Word Media's Reader Reach ads, which run on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon, tailored specifically for indie authors. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on data-driven decisions, such as analyzing which ads perform best to optimize future campaigns.* Data and Feedback:* Russell and Mike discuss the importance of receiving detailed feedback on ad performance, including metrics like clicks and impressions, to improve future ad campaigns. Russell expresses a desire for more granular data to understand which specific ad creatives and keywords are most effective.* Pricing Strategy:* The conversation delves into pricing strategies for book series, with recommendations to heavily discount or make the first book in a series free to attract readers and drive sales for subsequent books at full price. The hosts debate the effectiveness of discounting later books in a series.* Long-Term Marketing Approach:* The episode emphasizes the need for a long-term perspective on book marketing, treating the launch as a continuous process rather than a one-time event. This includes ongoing promotion through influencer outreach, TikTok ads, and other channels, to keep momentum going even months after the initial launch.* Direct Sales and Conversion Ads:* A significant portion of the discussion is dedicated to the advantages of running direct sales ads and using conversion events to optimize ad performance. Mike introduces the idea of using meta's conversion pixel for better targeting and efficiency in ad campaigns, especially for direct sales through an author's website.* Lead Generation:* The hosts also touch on the effectiveness of lead generation ads for building an email list, discussing benchmarks for cost per lead and the importance of list quality over quantity.Final Thoughts:The episode provides a comprehensive look at the complexities of book marketing, emphasizing the importance of continuous testing, data analysis, and a long-term approach to building and sustaining book sales. The key takeaway is that effective marketing for indie authors requires a combination of strategic ad spending, price promotions, and ongoing engagement with readers. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com

How can you sell a fiction experience rather than just selling a story? How do our personal obsessions arise in our books, whatever the genre? David Viergutz shares his thoughts in this episode. In the intro, the best marketing investments for authors [Self Publishing Advice]; Abundance mindset for authors [KWL Podcast]; Written Word Media have […] The post Writing Horror And Selling Direct With David Viergutz first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Self-publishing might be a DIY publishing model, but there are plenty of tools and resources to help you get your book from manuscript to market. In this episode, Matt & Lauren discuss a debatable number of tools to help you draft, edit, format, design, market, and ship your book. Dive Deeper

You've gotten through writing, editing, design, production, distribution, and publication. Your book is now published and available and... now what? Written Word Media's Emma Boyer joins us in this episode of All Things Book Marketing to discuss timing, strategy, and recommendations for post-publication promotions.  Emma Boyer is the VP of Digital Operations at Written Word Media, a book promotion company that uses specialized and proprietary data-driven marketing techniques to empower authors and publishers to reach their audiences, and has been working in various capacities in the book publishing industry — from PR to marketing to consulting — for over 15 years. She holds an MA from Carnegie Mellon University and is very interested in the potential at the intersection of the tech and publishing worlds and is passionate about helping authors find audiences and audiences find books. Learn more at www.writtenwordmedia.com.Discover more about Smith Publicity at www.smithpublicity.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, & LinkedIn.

Written Word Media published a deep dive piece about how to avoid an Amazon KDP termination or suspension. IngramSpark launched a new free tool for authors; is it any good? And, Barnes & Noble Press loads you up with their top tips for summer book marketing. All that and more in the self-publishing news. Book Award Pro - https://DaleLinks.com/BookAwardPro (affiliate link) Get my latest book at every major online retailer: - Self-Publishing for New Authors - https://DaleLinks.com/NewAuthors Subscribe to The Self-Publishing Hub - https://TheSelfPublishingHub.com Join Channel Memberships - https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships  Join Me on Discord - https://DaleLinks.com/Discord Check out my main YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@DaleLRoberts  Sources: Awards for Authors: Secrets from a Book Award Judge - https://bookawardpro.com/blog/secrets-from-a-book-award-judge/ Mastering Metadata: How to Avoid KDP Account Suspension - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/how-to-avoid-kdp-account-suspension/  IngramSpark's Book-Building Tool - https://www.ingramspark.com/design-a-book Hot Summer Book Marketing Tips for Indie Authors - https://press.barnesandnoble.com/bnpress-blog/summer-book-marketing-tips-indie-authors/ Atticus: Customer Success Geek - https://www.atticus.io/join-our-team/ Reader Magnets and Growing Your Email List for Indie Author Success - https://selfpublishingadvice.org/podcast-reader-magnets/ PublishDrive - https://DaleLinks.com/PublishDrive (referral link) Selling Audiobooks: Production, Marketing, and Distribution - Q&A w/ Lindsay Senior @ Author's Republic - https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0kc--rrzguEtRiC-4Y-QCg6d1xiqLhcXFV#/registration Non Fiction Extravaganza July Part 2 - https://DaleLinks.com/VirtualFair Self Publishing for New Authors with Dale L. Roberts - https://youtu.be/Nsvu2Bth3Wg?si=Bxt7zAp_L6f6HGVo  Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

In this episode, we are joined by Clayton Noblit, senior book marketing manager at Written Word Media. Clayton has been a voracious reader his whole life and, after working in financial start-ups, moved to Written Word Media and has been there ever since. Clayton loves working with indie books and indie authors and has a lot of great advice to offer the community! As an expert in digital marketing, he had a lot to share with us. We talked about Clayton's start in the indie author community, learned more about Written Word Media's services, discussed strategies around promo stacking, and got lots of great marketing advice for authors. If you're curious about improving your promo strategies and skills, don't miss this great episode. Learn more about Written Word Media, check out Written Word Media on TikTok, and be sure to sign up for Written Word Media's newsletter!

Can you have a business with a soul through writing? How does the business of fiction differ from non-fiction? What are some tips for pitching a book for film & TV? All this and more with Aurora Winter. In the intro, 100 book marketing ideas [Written Word Media]; 25 indie authors tips to finding success […] The post Turn Words Into Wealth With Aurora Winter first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Mark has a chat with Clayton Noblit, a senior marketing manager at Written Word Media. Prior to the interview, Mark thanks Patrons, welcomes a few new Buy Me A Coffee buddies, shares a personal update, and shares a word from this episode's sponsor. episode's sponsor. Learn more about this self-publishing/WIDE-publishing focused cruise. In the interview Mark and Clayton talk about: What Written Media is (a book marketing/promotions company) Clayton's personal background as a marketer, and a big reader, but not an author The purposeful design of the Written Word Media dashboard to help authors schedule a marketing promotion in about 20 minutes then get back on to the other parts of their day The various Written Word Media reader-facing brands: FreeBooksy, BargainBooksy, Red Feather Romance, New in Books, and Audiothicket Their partnerships with other reader promo sites like eReader News Today, Book Barbarian, Hello Books, and others The strategy of promo stacking by spreading marketing promotions out over a series of 3 to 5 days How the Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads support at Written Word Media works The Written Word Media membership levels (Gold and Platinum) which offer a 10% discount on booking promos as well as additional exclusive promotion options and savings on other third party services The Limelight feature promotion option available for members The content that appears on the Written Word Media blog, including regular surveys of authors and industry trends A few of the responses from a survey conducted in late 2023 A discussion of author's perceptions of AI and social media The importance of diversifying instead of being reliant on a single platform Advice Clayton offers to authors working on promoting and marketing their books   After the interview Mark reflects on just how much Written Word Media has grown over the years, by listening to authors, and adding tools and options to allow for greater efficiency in marketing. He also notes how authors are becoming more professional in their approach of planning ahead, and admits to not being as good at making those plans as he'd hoped.   Links of Interest: Written Word Media EP 008 - Author Promotions with Ricci Wolman from Written Word Media EP 185 - Promotion Results and Analysis EP 285 - Written Word Media's Top 10 Publishing Trends for 2023 EP 342 - Publishing Trend Reflections for 2024 DropCap Marketplace  Use coupon STARK20 to get 20% off Cruising Writers Buy Mark a Coffee Patreon for Stark Reflections How to Access Patreon RSS Feeds An Author's Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries The Relaxed Author Buy eBook Direct Buy Audiobook Direct Publishing Pitfalls for Authors An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores Wide for the Win Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books This Time Around (Short Story) A Canadian Werewolf in New York Stowe Away (Novella) Fear and Longing in Los Angeles Fright Nights, Big City Lover's Moon Hex and the City Only Monsters in the Building The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard   Clayton Noblit is a senior marketing manager at Written Word Media. He is passionate about helping authors find their readers and finding ways to sell more books. When he's not working, he enjoys spending time with his family, playing sports, and making beverages. The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Lee and Russell welcome Michael Hourigan from Written Word Media to discuss paid newsletter promotions such as Freebooksy and Bargainbooksy. * The most important marketing tool an author (or anyone) can have* Easy and proven ways to grow a newsletter * How Lee earns a full time income on autopilot * WTF is “Promo stacking” and WTF do we care?* A quick and easy way to get a launch plan (hint: make Michael do it) * How to get free help fixing your blurb Resources: * Free Book Launch Checklist* Your 1 Page Book Marketing Quick Start Guide by Lee Savino * A Guide to Welcome Emails For Authors* Reader Reach Ads: What to Expect* Top Book Marketing Strategy for Authors: Promo Stacking* Limelight Book Promo Emails* What genre should I promote my book in?* Contacting Written Word Media for assistance with your book blurb or building your marketing plan* Writing and Release Rapidly by Elana Johnson This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sixfigureauthorexperiment.com

Listen as James talks to Mike Hourigan who is the Vice President of Marketing at Written Word Media, where he brings more than 15 years of digital marketing expertise to the table.    

How do you promote your books?It's not just about penning the next bestseller; it's about connecting with readers, and that's where Written Word Media comes in. If you have questions about book marketing, listen in.In this week's interview, we're talking with Clayton Noblit, senior marketing manager at Written Word Media, a platform that empowers authors and publishers to reach their audience through specialized book promotion products. He might not be an writer himself, but Clayton is passionate about helping authors find their readers and sell more books. Follow Us! Clayton NoblitWebsite: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writtenwordmediaThe Author Wheel:Website: www.AuthorWheel.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorWheelGreta Boris:Website: www.GretaBoris.comFacebook: @GretaBorisAuthorInstagram: @GretaBorisMegan Haskell:Website: www.MeganHaskell.comFacebook & Instagram: @MeganHaskellAuthorTikTok: @AuthorMeganHaskellThe Last Descendant Special Edition Kickstarter Campaignhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/meganhaskell/lastdescendant *****⭐️ SUPPORT THE SHOW ⭐️If you're enjoying The Author Wheel Podcast, please consider supporting the show by clicking the link below! Your contribution helps us cover the ongoing expenses—like hosting and editing—that are critical to the creation of this podcast.The Happy Writer with Marissa MeyerAuthors, from debuts to bestsellers, chat about books, writing, publishing, and joy. Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Support the showFREE Mini Email CourseHave you ever struggled to explain to others exactly what you write? Or wondered which of the many fiction ideas running through your brain you should tackle? If so, The Author Wheel's new mini-course might be your solution. 7 Days to Clarity: Uncover Your Author Purpose will help you uncover your core writing motivations, avoid shiny-thing syndrome, and create clear marketing language. Each daily email will lead you step by step in defining your author brand, crafting a mission statement, and distilling that statement into a pithy tagline. And, best of all, it's free. Click here to learn more!

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  Highlights from Written Word Media's 2023 author survey Indie author business structures What is meant by MVP books Community building and author branding AI predictions and how it affects authors Making your business more sustainable Prose in the Market Webinar Information: I am running three session times to try and accommodate as many timezones as I can (more on this below). "Writing to market" isn't new. But when teachers talk about it they focus on understanding the market, advertising, brand and pitch. But what about the writing and craft of writing to market? If you're tired of trying to work out how to deliver what readers want, then this is the workshop for you. In this session, I'll explain: How to deconstruct bestselling books and implement the tools you find An easy three step methodology for deconstruction Practical examples of deconstruction and implementation in your own work Why you're not using copywriting enough How to intentionally slip TikTok-able/Marketable scenes into your novels that will hook readers The craft of tropes Live deconstruction using examples from those in the session. You'll also receive a workbook containing exercises for you to implement all the things you learn during the session. Session Times and Dates Friday 9th Feb 2024 at 7pm BST (11am PST, 2pm EST, and 8am Sat 9th Auckland (DST NZDT) https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/770172856747?aff=oddtdtcreator  Saturday 10th Feb 4pm BST (8am PST, 11am EST, 5am Sunday11th (DST NZDT) https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/770175976077?aff=oddtdtcreator  Saturday 10th Feb 8pm BST (12pm PST, 3pm EST, 9am Sunday 11th (DST NZDT) https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/770177631027?aff=oddtdtcreator FAQ Will this session be recorded? Will the recording be available for sale? The session will be recorded. The recording will only be available to ticket-holders. I will not sell the recording. I am only doing these as live sessions. When I teach, I love to see everyone's reactions and get audience participation. But depending on demand, I may run more of them in the future. Find out more about Clayton: Written Word Media Rebel of the Week is: Beth If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com 1 new patron this week, welcome and thank you to Jesse Read. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack  This Show is Sponsored by ProWritingAid Rebel Discount link Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Episode 203 / Do you want to simplify marketing? Do you want to take your branding up a notch? Do you want to know the trends in writing and publishing? Clayton Noblit of Written Word Media has answers about these topics and also shares tips on where to start with branding and common mistakes new authors often make.https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/

In this special bonus solo episode, Mark shares some reflections about recent publishing trends. Prior to the main content, Mark welcomes new patron Donn King, and shares a word about this episode's sponsor, the patrons of the Stark Reflections Podcast. Links of Interest: Written Word Media Publishing Trends Posts 2024 2023 2022 2020 How to Write a Howling Good Story Smashwords link Patron Coupon for 75% off EP 340 - Personality, Passion, Presentation, and Persistence with Todd Fahnestock EP 011 - The Power of Free With Musician and Composer Kevin MacLeod Mark's YouTube Channel Buy Mark a Coffee Patreon for Stark Reflections Best Book Ever Podcast Lovers Moon Podcast The Relaxed Author Buy eBook Direct Buy Audiobook Direct Publishing Pitfalls for Authors An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores Wide for the Win Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books This Time Around (Short Story) A Canadian Werewolf in New York Stowe Away (Novella) Fear and Longing in Los Angeles Fright Nights, Big City Lover's Moon Hex and the City The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard   The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Wherever you are on the author journey, there are some important questions to consider along the way. Joe Solari outlines a strategic step forward for new authors, midlist indies, and those with ambitious financial goals. Plus, what is Author Nation? In the intro, Top 10 trends for publishing [Written Word Media]; Indie author predictions for […] The post The Next Strategic Step On Your Author Journey And Author Nation With Joe Solari first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Findaway Voices by Spotify makes a MAJOR pivot, allowing Google Play's AI narration to be distributed to more online retailers. An indie author sees a huge payoff to #booktook on TikTok. And, Written Word Media released the results from a recent indie author survey. All that and more in the self-publishing news today! Join Channel Memberships - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl9CjdZQtzufqgYx0CidSbA/join  Join my community at: Discord - http://dalelinks.com/discord  Sources: TikTok's #BookTok trend 'literally changed my life' - https://au.news.yahoo.com/tiktoks-booktok-trend-literally-changed-072145517.html Now Distributing Audiobooks with Digital Voice Narration - https://blog.findawayvoices.com/now-distributing-audiobooks-with-digital-voice-narration/  Auto-narrated audiobooks - https://play.google.com/books/publish/autonarrated/  Survey Results: The State of Indie Authorship - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/survey-results-the-state-of-indie-authorship/ Quick-Ship Products for the Holidays - https://mailchi.mp/vervante/foilstamping-1127468  KWL Live Q&A – Planning, Prepping and Productivity Tips for Self-published Authors with Sarra Cannon - https://www.youtube.com/live/qqa3ezBgHPs?si=ukQac-3IRas58sWL Joe Solari's Author Newsletter - https://courses.joesolari.com/newsletter?r_done=1 The Self-Publishing Hub - https://TheSelfPublishingHub.com Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

Marketing can be the bane of an indie author's existence, but imagine having a best friend in the industry, one who's always eager to cheer for your work and sing the praises of your books. There's a company making waves in the author community, offering a helping hand that works tirelessly to put your stories in the spotlight. Their innovative solutions are a beacon of hope for writers navigating the intricate world of book promotion. In this week's podcast episode, I sit down with Clayton Noblit from Written Word Media to discuss their latest breakthrough for author marketing: Promo Stacks. Tailor-made for the independent author, this strategy simplifies the complex task of book marketing into an accessible and impactful process. Tune in to Episode 208 of the Author Revolution Podcast to learn how Promo Stacks could be the key to unlocking your book's potential and simplifying your marketing endeavors. Tune in now at https://authorrevolution.org/208.

How can you reinvigorate your writing process, breathe life into your backlist, and prepare your author business for the rollercoaster that is publishing? Tracy Cooper-Posey gives her tips. In the intro, Authors Guild results [The Hotsheet]; more Promo Stacks with Written Word Media; Amazon's robot [BBC]; Amazon's generative image AI for products [Venture Beat]; Shutterstock's […] The post Managing Your Author Business Over The Long Term With Tracy Cooper-Posey first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Patrick O'Donnell as they discuss the week's publishing topics, including Book Riot's thoughts on the future of bookstores. Then, stick around as Christine chats with bestselling author Andrew Child! Andrew Child is a British author who also writes as Andrew Grant. He is the author of several books, including the David Trevellyan series and the Paul McGrath series. For the last several years, Andrew has worked alongside his brother Lee Child on the latter's blockbuster Jack Reacher books in preparation for taking over the series. The duo's fourth and latest Reacher collaboration, The Secret, drops tomorrow, October 24, and is available for preorder now. Check It Out! The Secret: A Jack Reacher Novel - https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-secret-a-jack-reacher-novel-lee-child/19630515 Andrew Child's previous Writers, Ink appearances - Episode 106, Episode 157 Show Links: Writers, Ink on YouTube! - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@jdbarker_author/podcasts⁠⁠⁠ J.D. Barker - ⁠⁠⁠https://jdbarker.com/⁠⁠⁠ Christine Daigle - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.christinedaiglebooks.com/⁠⁠⁠ JP Rindfleisch IX - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jprindfleischix.com/⁠⁠⁠ Kevin Tumlinson - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.kevintumlinson.com/⁠⁠⁠ Patrick O'Donnell - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.copsandwriters.com/⁠⁠⁠ Andrew Child - https://www.jackreacher.com/us/authors/ TODAY'S SPONSOR: AutoCrit - https://www.autocrit.com/jd (click this link to take advantage of our Writers, Ink special offer!!!) Written Word Media - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/ Other Links Best of BookTok - ⁠⁠⁠https://bestofbooktok.com/⁠⁠⁠ Booktrib - ⁠⁠https://booktrib.com/author/writers-ink/⁠⁠ Music by Nicorus - ⁠⁠⁠https://cctrax.com/nicorus/dust-to-dust-ep⁠⁠⁠ Voice Over by Rick Ganley - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.nhpr.com⁠⁠⁠ and recorded at Mill Pond Studio - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.millpondstudio.com⁠⁠⁠ Show notes & audio production by Geoff Emberlyn - ⁠https://twitter.com/horrorstoic⁠⁠⁠ Website Design by Word & Pixel - ⁠⁠⁠http://wordandpixel.com/⁠⁠⁠ Contact - ⁠⁠⁠https://writersinkpodcast.com/contact/⁠⁠⁠ *NOTE: Some of the links are affiliate links. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writersink/support

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, JP Rindfleisch IX, Kevin Tumlinson, and Patrick O'Donnell as they discuss the week's publishing topics, including Book Riot's thoughts on the future of bookstores. Then, stick around as J.P. talks with New York Times bestselling author Richard Chizmar. Richard Chizmar is the co-author (with Stephen King) of the bestselling Gwendy's Button Box trilogy and is the founder/publisher of Cemetery Dance magazine and the Cemetery Dance Publications book imprint. He has edited more than 35 anthologies, and his short fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, including multiple editions of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. His latest novel, Becoming The Boogeyman, the follow-up to his 2021 smash hit, Chasing The Boogeyman, was released on October 10 and is available wherever books are sold. Check It Out! Becoming The Boogeyman - https://bookshop.org/p/books/becoming-the-boogeyman-richard-chizmar/19726757 Richard Chizmar on Writers, Ink - Episode 12, Episode 94 "Are Co-Op Bookstores the Future of Bookselling?" via Book Riot - https://bookriot.com/co-op-bookstores Show Links: Writers, Ink on YouTube! - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@jdbarker_author/podcasts⁠⁠⁠ J.D. Barker - ⁠⁠⁠https://jdbarker.com/⁠⁠⁠ Christine Daigle - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.christinedaiglebooks.com/⁠⁠⁠ JP Rindfleisch IX - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jprindfleischix.com/⁠⁠⁠ Kevin Tumlinson - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.kevintumlinson.com/⁠⁠⁠ Patrick O'Donnell - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.copsandwriters.com/⁠⁠⁠ Richard Chizmar - https://richardchizmar.com/ TODAY'S SPONSOR: AutoCrit - https://www.autocrit.com/jd (click this link to take advantage of our Writers, Ink special offer!!!) Written Word Media - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/ Other Links Best of BookTok - ⁠⁠⁠https://bestofbooktok.com/⁠⁠⁠ Booktrib - ⁠⁠https://booktrib.com/author/writers-ink/⁠⁠ Music by Nicorus - ⁠⁠⁠https://cctrax.com/nicorus/dust-to-dust-ep⁠⁠⁠ Voice Over by Rick Ganley - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.nhpr.com⁠⁠⁠ and recorded at Mill Pond Studio - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.millpondstudio.com⁠⁠⁠ Show notes & audio production by Geoff Emberlyn - ⁠https://twitter.com/horrorstoic⁠⁠⁠ Website Design by Word & Pixel - ⁠⁠⁠http://wordandpixel.com/⁠⁠⁠ Contact - ⁠⁠⁠https://writersinkpodcast.com/contact/⁠⁠⁠ *NOTE: Some of the links are affiliate links. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writersink/support

Amazon KDP launched a new scheduled release feature for print books. Also, Amazon has been revealing the backend keywords for a ton of print books. Also, Spotify officially announces the new Premium Membership access to their catalog of 150,000+ titles. And, so much more in the Self-Publishing News this week! Dibbly Create - https://DaleLinks.com/DibblyCreate (affiliate link) Join Channel Memberships - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl9CjdZQtzufqgYx0CidSbA/join Join my community on Discord - http://dalelinks.com/discord  Sources: Schedule when your KDP print book becomes live on Amazon - https://www.kdpcommunity.com/s/article/Schedule-when-your-KDP-print-book-becomes-live-on-Amazon?language=en_US&forum=KDP%20Forum Spotify Launches Audiobooks to Eligible Premium Subscribers - https://blog.findawayvoices.com/spotify-launches-audiobooks-for-eligible-premium-subscribers/ Preparing to Write a Novel: 5 Keys to Success - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/preparing-to-write-a-novel-5-keys-to-success-reedsy-live-tickets-719176194357 Laterpress - https://www.laterpress.com/ Writing Books Remains a Tough Way to Make a Living - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/93301-author-incomes-post-small-gains.html Bookvault Gives ALLi Members Unlimited Title Uploads - https://twitter.com/bookvault_app/status/1709579241292009881 The Alliance of Independent Authors - https://DaleLinks.com/ALLi (affiliate link) The Art of the Title Competition (free for ALLi members) - https://selfpublishingadviceconference.com/art-of-the-title-competition/ Written Word Media presents Subscriber Surge Giveaways - https://secure.writtenwordmedia.com/features/subscriber-surge-giveaways Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, JP Rindfleisch IX, Kevin Tumlinson, and Patrick O'Donnell as they discuss the week's publishing topics, including some exciting publishing news for our very own J.D.! Then, stick around as Christine chats with Ashley Winstead. Ashley Winstead is the author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and The Last Housewife. She holds a Ph.D. in contemporary American literature and a B.A. in English and art history. She lives in Houston, Texas, where she drinks red wine and dreams up novels. Her latest, Midnight is The Darkest Hour, was released last week, October 3, and is available wherever books are sold! Check It Out! Midnight is The Darkest Hour - https://bookshop.org/p/books/midnight-is-the-darkest-hour-ashley-winstead/19462760 Simon & Schuster Team Up With J.D. Barker Imprint, Hampton Creek Press - https://bit.ly/3rH78YX Lit Agent Laura Zats' Twitter Thread on Lit Agent Landscape - https://twitter.com/LZats/status/1707414688173064584 Can Spotify Take Digital Audiobooks to the Next Level? (via Publishers Weekly) - https://bit.ly/3rO2atp Show Links: Writers, Ink on YouTube! - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@jdbarker_author/podcasts⁠⁠⁠ J.D. Barker - ⁠⁠⁠https://jdbarker.com/⁠⁠⁠ Christine Daigle - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.christinedaiglebooks.com/⁠⁠⁠ JP Rindfleisch IX - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jprindfleischix.com/⁠⁠⁠ Kevin Tumlinson - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.kevintumlinson.com/⁠⁠⁠ Patrick O'Donnell - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.copsandwriters.com/⁠⁠⁠] Ashley Winstead - https://www.ashleywinstead.com/ TODAY'S SPONSOR: AutoCrit - https://www.autocrit.com/jd (click this link to take advantage of our Writers, Ink special offer!!!) Written Word Media - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/ Other Links Best of BookTok - ⁠⁠⁠https://bestofbooktok.com/⁠⁠⁠ Booktrib - ⁠⁠https://booktrib.com/author/writers-ink/⁠⁠ Music by Nicorus - ⁠⁠⁠https://cctrax.com/nicorus/dust-to-dust-ep⁠⁠⁠ Voice Over by Rick Ganley - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.nhpr.com⁠⁠⁠ and recorded at Mill Pond Studio - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.millpondstudio.com⁠⁠⁠ Show notes & audio production by Geoff Emberlyn - ⁠https://twitter.com/horrorstoic⁠⁠⁠ Website Design by Word & Pixel - ⁠⁠⁠http://wordandpixel.com/⁠⁠⁠ Contact - ⁠⁠⁠https://writersinkpodcast.com/contact/⁠⁠⁠ *NOTE: Some of the links are affiliate links. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writersink/support

Join hosts Christine Daigle, JP Rindfleisch IX, Kevin Tumlinson, and Patrick O'Donnell as they discuss the week's publishing topics, including the victorious end of the WGA Writers Strike! Then, stick around as Christine chats with novelist and TV writer Daniel Sweren-Becker. Daniel Sweren-Becker is an author, television writer, and playwright living in Los Angeles. His play Stress Positions premiered in New York City at the SoHo Playhouse. He grew up in Manhattan. He is the author of the novels The Ones and The Equals. His latest novel, Kill Show, releases tomorrow, October 3, and is available for preorder now! Check It Out! Kill Show: A True Crime Novel - https://bit.ly/3F4oGBe Dialogue Dash—Registration open until October 6! - https://dialoguedoctor.teachable.com/p/dialoguedash "The Hollywood writers' strike is over — and they won big" via Vox - https://www.vox.com/culture/2023/9/24/23888673/wga-strike-end-sag-aftra-contract Show Links: Writers, Ink on YouTube! - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@jdbarker_author/podcasts⁠⁠⁠ J.D. Barker - ⁠⁠⁠https://jdbarker.com/⁠⁠⁠ Christine Daigle - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.christinedaiglebooks.com/⁠⁠⁠ JP Rindfleisch IX - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jprindfleischix.com/⁠⁠⁠ Kevin Tumlinson - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.kevintumlinson.com/⁠⁠⁠ Patrick O'Donnell - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.copsandwriters.com/⁠⁠⁠ TODAY'S SPONSOR: AutoCrit - https://www.autocrit.com/jd (click this link to take advantage of our Writers, Ink special offer!!!) Written Word Media - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/ Other Links Best of BookTok - ⁠⁠⁠https://bestofbooktok.com/⁠⁠⁠ Booktrib - ⁠⁠https://booktrib.com/author/writers-ink/⁠⁠ Music by Nicorus - ⁠⁠⁠https://cctrax.com/nicorus/dust-to-dust-ep⁠⁠⁠ Voice Over by Rick Ganley - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.nhpr.com⁠⁠⁠ and recorded at Mill Pond Studio - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.millpondstudio.com⁠⁠⁠ Show notes & audio production by Geoff Emberlyn - ⁠https://twitter.com/horrorstoic⁠⁠⁠ Website Design by Word & Pixel - ⁠⁠⁠http://wordandpixel.com/⁠⁠⁠ Contact - ⁠⁠⁠https://writersinkpodcast.com/contact/⁠⁠⁠ *NOTE: Some of the links are affiliate links. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writersink/support

Join hosts Christine Daigle, JP Rindfleisch IX, and Patrick O'Donnell as they discuss the week's publishing topics, including a rash of "culture war" blowbacks on American libraries. Then, stick around as Patrick chats with naval intelligence officer turned thriller writer M.P. Woodward! M.P. Woodward is a veteran of both US intelligence ops and the entertainment industry. In multiple deployments to the Persian Gulf and the Far East, he worked alongside US Special Forces, CIA, and NSA. Most recently, Woodward ran international partner distribution for Amazon Prime and Prime Video. His latest novel, Dead Drop, was released back in May and is available wherever books are sold. Check It Out! Dead Drop - https://bookshop.org/p/books/dead-drop-m-p-woodward/18664396 "Red states quit nation's oldest library group amid culture war over books" via The Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/15/american-library-association-book-bans/ Show Links: Writers, Ink on YouTube! - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@jdbarker_author/podcasts⁠⁠⁠ J.D. Barker - ⁠⁠⁠https://jdbarker.com/⁠⁠⁠ Christine Daigle - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.christinedaiglebooks.com/⁠⁠⁠ JP Rindfleisch IX - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jprindfleischix.com/⁠⁠⁠ Kevin Tumlinson - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.kevintumlinson.com/⁠⁠⁠ Patrick O'Donnell - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.copsandwriters.com/⁠⁠⁠ M.P. Woodward - https://www.mpwoodward.com/ TODAY'S SPONSOR: AutoCrit - https://www.autocrit.com/jd (click this link to take advantage of our Writers, Ink special offer!!!) Written Word Media - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/ Other Links Best of BookTok - ⁠⁠⁠https://bestofbooktok.com/⁠⁠⁠ Booktrib - ⁠⁠https://booktrib.com/author/writers-ink/⁠⁠ Music by Nicorus - ⁠⁠⁠https://cctrax.com/nicorus/dust-to-dust-ep⁠⁠⁠ Voice Over by Rick Ganley - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.nhpr.com⁠⁠⁠ and recorded at Mill Pond Studio - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.millpondstudio.com⁠⁠⁠ Show notes & audio production by Geoff Emberlyn - ⁠https://twitter.com/horrorstoic⁠⁠⁠ Website Design by Word & Pixel - ⁠⁠⁠http://wordandpixel.com/⁠⁠⁠ Contact - ⁠⁠⁠https://writersinkpodcast.com/contact/⁠⁠⁠ *NOTE: Some of the links are affiliate links. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writersink/support

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Patrick O'Donnell as they discuss the week's publishing topics, including a new lawsuit involving authors and OpenAI. Then, stick around as Kevin chats with debut novelist Khashayar Khabushani! Khashayar J. Khabushani was born in Van Nuys, California, in 1992. During his childhood, he spent time in Iran before returning to Los Angeles. He studied philosophy at California State University, Northridge, and prior to completing his MFA at Columbia University, he worked as a middle school teacher. [source] His debut novel, I Will Greet The Sun Again, was released on August 1 and is available now wherever books are sold. Check It Out! I Will Greet The Sun Again - https://bookshop.org/p/books/i-will-greet-the-sun-again-khashayar-j-khabushani/18824265 Patreon Goes "All In" On Community - https://blog.patreon.com/were-going-all-in-on-community-by-giving-fans-their-own-space-to-chat-and-connect "Book Publishing's Broken Blurb System," Esquire - https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a44948120/book-publishing-broken-blurbs-system/ Show Links: Writers, Ink on YouTube! - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@jdbarker_author/podcasts⁠⁠⁠ J.D. Barker - ⁠⁠⁠https://jdbarker.com/⁠⁠⁠ Christine Daigle - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.christinedaiglebooks.com/⁠⁠⁠ JP Rindfleisch IX - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jprindfleischix.com/⁠⁠⁠ Kevin Tumlinson - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.kevintumlinson.com/⁠⁠⁠ Patrick O'Donnell - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.copsandwriters.com/⁠⁠⁠ TODAY'S SPONSOR: AutoCrit - https://www.autocrit.com/jd (click this link to take advantage of our Writers, Ink special offer!!!) Written Word Media - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/ Other Links Best of BookTok - ⁠⁠⁠https://bestofbooktok.com/⁠⁠⁠ Booktrib - ⁠⁠https://booktrib.com/author/writers-ink/⁠⁠ Music by Nicorus - ⁠⁠⁠https://cctrax.com/nicorus/dust-to-dust-ep⁠⁠⁠ Voice Over by Rick Ganley - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.nhpr.com⁠⁠⁠ and recorded at Mill Pond Studio - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.millpondstudio.com⁠⁠⁠ Show notes & audio production by Geoff Emberlyn - ⁠https://twitter.com/horrorstoic⁠⁠⁠ Website Design by Word & Pixel - ⁠⁠⁠http://wordandpixel.com/⁠⁠⁠ Contact - ⁠⁠⁠https://writersinkpodcast.com/contact/⁠⁠⁠ *NOTE: Some of the links are affiliate links. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writersink/support

Join hosts J.D. Barker, Christine Daigle, Kevin Tumlinson, and Patrick O'Donnell as they discuss the week's publishing topics, including Amazon's newly released policy on AI works. Then, stick around as Kevin chats with "Real Book Spy" and thriller author Ryan Speck. Ryan Steck is a freelance editor, an author, and the founder and EIC of The Real Book Spy. Ryan has been named an "Online Influencer" by Amazon and is a regular columnist at CrimeReads. Praised as “One of the hardest working, most thoughtful, and fairest reviewers out there” by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, Steck has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). His latest novel, Lethal Range (Book #2 in the Matthew Redd Thriller series), was released on August 8 and is available now. Check It Out! Ryan's Books on Amazon! - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B09KQHNGHH The Authors Guild take on Amazon's AI policy - https://authorsguild.org/news/amazons-new-disclosure-policy-for-ai-generated-book-content-is-a-welcome-first-step/ Show Links: Writers, Ink on YouTube! - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@jdbarker_author/podcasts⁠⁠⁠ J.D. Barker - ⁠⁠⁠https://jdbarker.com/⁠⁠⁠ Christine Daigle - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.christinedaiglebooks.com/⁠⁠⁠ JP Rindfleisch IX - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jprindfleischix.com/⁠⁠⁠ Kevin Tumlinson - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.kevintumlinson.com/⁠⁠⁠ Patrick O'Donnell - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.copsandwriters.com/⁠⁠⁠ Ryan Steck - https://therealbookspy.com/ TODAY'S SPONSOR: AutoCrit - https://www.autocrit.com/jd (click this link to take advantage of our Writers, Ink special offer!!!) Written Word Media - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/ Other Links Best of BookTok - ⁠⁠⁠https://bestofbooktok.com/⁠⁠⁠ Booktrib - ⁠⁠https://booktrib.com/author/writers-ink/⁠⁠ Music by Nicorus - ⁠⁠⁠https://cctrax.com/nicorus/dust-to-dust-ep⁠⁠⁠ Voice Over by Rick Ganley - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.nhpr.com⁠⁠⁠ and recorded at Mill Pond Studio - ⁠⁠⁠http://www.millpondstudio.com⁠⁠⁠ Show notes & audio production by Geoff Emberlyn - ⁠https://twitter.com/horrorstoic⁠⁠⁠ Website Design by Word & Pixel - ⁠⁠⁠http://wordandpixel.com/⁠⁠⁠ Contact - ⁠⁠⁠https://writersinkpodcast.com/contact/⁠⁠⁠ *NOTE: Some of the links are affiliate links. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writersink/support

KDP Alternatives, IngramSpark announce HUGE change in wholesale discounts in the US. Written Word Media chronicles the tumultuous history of the KDP Select Program. Learn Amazon Ads with the folks at Book Brush. And, so much more in the Self-Publishing News! Join Channel Memberships - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl9CjdZQtzufqgYx0CidSbA/join Join my community at: Discord - http://dalelinks.com/discord  News sources: Dibbly Create - https://DaleLinks.com/DibblyCreate (affiliate link) The Hot Sheet - https://hotsheetpub.com/ KDP Global Fund Payouts [Updated August 2023] - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/kdp-global-fund-payouts/ IngramSpark Service Alert - https://www.ingramspark.com/important-update-minimum-wholesale-discount IngramSpark Reduces Author Royalties - Disappointing Update - https://youtu.be/PXgPkrYC33Y?si=JIgwhiTErlUutEfh Amazon Ads Made Simple - https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkceusqDMtH9FTvxu8uzUzDKmry96KNBGI#/registration Bestseller Secrets Summit - https://bestsellersecrets.io/ Writing & Productivity Sprints with the Pomodoro Timer - https://www.youtube.com/live/z9VkCbXpdAY?si=4oOdl_WAHHf2VBxA Miblart Premium Cover Design Giveaway - https://DaleLinks.com/Giveaway  Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

How can you shift your mindset in order to reach more readers with your books? How can you leverage the tools available for authors to sell more copies? Ricci Wolman from Written Word Media gives her tips. In the intro, The Hotsheet useful newsletter; Book publishing is broken; In the US, the Federal Trade Commission […] The post The Marketing Mind Shift And The Power Of Ad Stacking With Ricci Wolman first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Ricci Wolman explains the various services Written Word Media offers plus the recent partnership with Hello Books.

How can Bookfunnel help authors reach more readers, sell more books, and sell direct? Damon Courtney outlines features of Bookfunnel that you might not know about. In the intro, Hello Books and Written Word Media have joined forces for promo stacking; Call to Action (CTA) tips [ALLi]; my free Author Blueprint; Bundle for writers [Storybundle]. […] The post How Authors Can Use Bookfunnel To Read Readers And Sell Direct With Damon Courtney first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Build the fort! Ideas that seemed simple when you were a kid may seem insurmountable as an adult, but scaling up and building out your dreams really doesn't have to be that hard.   Dubbed “The Startup Whisperer” by startup community enthusiasts, Christopher Heivly is a life-long entrepreneur and multifaceted investor who spent forty years working as, for, and with entrepreneurs. Prior to becoming a successful startup community builder and consultant, Chris co-founded MapQuest — which sold to AOL for $1.2 billion. He currently serves as a managing director of The Startup Factory and is a highly sought-after public speaker.   Building a fort is a metaphor for all of the things that are required to hack away at a vision. Get rid of the noise, stop overanalyzing, and simplify your approach. How would you have tackled a project as massive as building a fort when you were 10 years old? Whether you're building a startup or scaling up your business, Chris takes an approach that feels as simple as building a fort.   Chris shares several stories that highlight his simplified approach to upping your game and building out your dreams. From building out the life-changing (at the time) MapQuest to the work that he has done with Written Word Media founder Ricci Wolman, he has seen the power of creating a community, fostering successful founders, and learning the ways that will make your company work.   There are a thousand ways to mess up your company, but experimenting is a critical component of success. Whether you are facing company, campaign, or hiring failures, just assume that you're going to make a bunch of mistakes and then go back to the simplicity of building a fort. Embrace failure, learn from the mistake, and just keep trying. It's really not that complicated.   Interview Links: Build the Fort   Resources: 20,000 Scaleups Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)   Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.   Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.   We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne's original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.   Did you enjoy today's episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

The KDP Print price change gets a price comparison chart and also affects another KDP alternative. Mark Dawson's Hello Books partners with Written Word Media. And, audiobook revenue increased in 2022. All that and more in this week's self-publishing news. Join Channel Memberships - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl9CjdZQtzufqgYx0CidSbA/join  Join my community at: Discord - http://dalelinks.com/discord Sources: Miblart Giveaway - https://DaleLinks.com/Giveaway Vervante rolls out Author Bios - https://mailchi.mp/vervante/foilstamping-1127407  Kindlepreneur Book Description Generator - https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-book-description-generator/ Book Brush Hourly Concepts - https://bookbrush.com/hourly-concepts/ Book Brush 101: June 2023 - https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpceypqDksH9MpPlTnh7QOuozn7D7IsJX8#/registration Written Word Media x Hello Books - https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/press-release-written-word-media-and-hello-books-announce-strategic-partnership-to-empower-authors/ The Hot Sheet - https://hotsheetpub.com/ AUDIOBOOK REVENUE INCREASES - https://www.audiopub.org/surveys?mc_cid=0b94894e62&mc_eid=433332c881 Publisher Drops Author After TikTok Backlash - https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-sarah-stusek-three-rivers-goodreads-backlash-1850498236 Amazon printing cost adjustments - https://publishdrive.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9034840565276 Printing cost changes FAQ - https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GPGVYM9KWTYLD2GD  Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

Episode 164 / We delve into writing craft this week with mystery author and podcaster John Gaspard, who shares how to use filmmaking techniques in novel writing. We also discuss finding unique aspects of our lives and using them in our books. We also cover some practical tips like the importance of eliminating unnecessary details between scenes and chapters, as well as cutting the last sentence or two of a scene, a technique recommended by Aaron Sorkin.John also shared how he uses existing content to create podcasts for readers. Links: Save the date: Written Word Media series: What We Wish We'd Known About Publishing With Sara Rosett and Jami Albright (April 27th, 2023 at 12:00pm ET): https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/speaker-series/Show notes: Timestamps:[00:00:52] Writing Veteran Transitions to Fiction Novelist[00:09:04] Don't encourage friends and family to buy[00:11:32] Author Buys Back Rights From Publisher: Success Story[00:19:17] Shifting Perceptions of Traditional Publishing vs Self-Publishing[00:21:27] The Popcorn Principles: Filmmaking Techniques for Writing"[00:23:33] Exploit Your Unique Perspective in Filmmaking[00:27:12] Maximize Impact: Lessons on Scene Structure[00:32:44] Leveling up: Revealing Character and Backstory through Dialog[00:36:38] Podcasting Chapters of Your Novel[00:42:31] The Timeless Podcast: Evergreen Content Author website: https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com

How can you use paid advertising as part of your book marketing strategy? How can you reach more readers and sell more books in the year ahead? Mark Dawson provides strategies and tips in this interview. In the intro, publishing trends for 2023 [Written Word Media]; Apple AI narration; ChatGPT into Bing [The Verge]; Comments […] The post How To Use Paid Advertising As Part Of Your Book Marketing With Mark Dawson first appeared on The Creative Penn.

This week we have a great show in store for you. Leave us a review on Apple Podcast and answer the Question of the Week in the comment section. Top Tips of the week include how to have the perfect writing space, wherever you are, whether or not you should juggle multiple projects at once, and which BookBub ads are working and how to test your own. The 5 News stories that matter most to indies this week is what happened when only two readers showed up at one author's signing, how D2D can get you selling in the Smashwords Store, why you should find a genre that you love to write that readers love to buy, the scoop on author earnings from Written Word Media, and what we think will happen with the USA Today bestseller list. Question of the week: How much emphasis do you put on your book launch? How would it feel if you didn't focus as much on sales in the first 30 days of a book's release?