Episode 328 - Learn to Write It, Learn to Publish It: Western Colorado University Master’s Programs in Publishing and Genre Fiction with Kevin J. Anderson & Johanna Parkhurst
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Kevin J. Anderson & Johanna Parkhurst discusses LEARN TO WRITE IT, LEARN TO PUBLISH IT, about Western Colorado University's master's programs in publishing and genre fiction, which treat commercial fiction as worthy of serious study and teach students every step from manuscript to market. They discuss the hands-on anthology project that drew nearly a thousand submissions, why understanding both indie and traditional publishing gives writers more career options, and what makes these programs unlike anything else in academia.
Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books, 58 of which have been national or international bestsellers, with over 24 million copies in print in 34 languages. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes and too many original works novels and series to mention. All this in addition to editing anthologies, writing comics and games, and composing the lyrics to three rock albums. Anderson and his wife Rebecca MESS-ta are the publishers of WordFire Press, and he is the director of the graduate program in Publishing at Western Colorado University.
Johanna Parkhurst, who also writes as J.E. Birk, is the author of award-winning and bestselling fiction and romance and primarily writes stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters. She has been published traditionally, by small presses, and also via her imprint Maple Mountains Press. Johanna is a Colorado Book Award winner and a Rainbow Romance Award winner. She is also a long-time teacher, recognized as Faculty of the Year at Pueblo Community College and as Faculty Mentor of the Year at Western Colorado University.
Episode Links
https://western.edu/landing/gpcw/
https://www.facebook.com/KJAauthor
Summary & Transcript
Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books—58 of which have been national or international bestsellers—with over 24 million copies in print in 34 languages. He is the director of the graduate program in publishing at Western Colorado University and, with his wife Rebecca Moesta, the publisher of WordFire Press. Johanna Parkhurst, who also writes as J.E. Burke, is a Colorado Book Award–winning and Rainbow Romance Award–winning author of fiction and romance featuring LGBTQ+ characters, and serves as faculty mentor and instructor in Western Colorado University's graduate program in genre fiction. In this conversation, Kevin and Johanna described a pair of graduate programs that take a fundamentally practical approach to teaching writers how to build sustainable careers.
A PROGRAM BUILT ON WHAT THEY WISHED SOMEONE HAD TAUGHT THEM
Kevin founded the publishing program after the university approached him about creating a master's degree. His condition was that he would teach only what he wished someone had taught him when he was starting out—the practical mechanics of both traditional and indie publishing, organized so that students could learn in one year what took him four decades to piece together. The program covers every step from manuscript to market: cover design, interior layout with Vellum, uploading to retailers, running Amazon ads, building Kickstarter campaigns, and understanding the economics of how publishers, authors, and bookstores each make money from a sale.
Johanna came to the genre fiction MFA with a similar frustration. When she was looking for graduate programs, she could not find one willing to work with her on romance, mystery, or sci-fi. The genre fiction program fills that gap by treating commercial fiction as worthy of serious academic study—reading bestsellers across every genre, analyzing what makes them work, and requiring students to write in genres outside their comfort zone.
LEARNING BY DOING
Both programs center on hands-on projects rather than traditional thesis papers. Kevin's publishing students produce a yearly anthology that pays professional rates, funded by a grant from Draft2Digital. The current anthology, INTO THE DEEP DARK WOODS, drew 998 submissions. Students read the slush pile, make multiple rounds of cuts, negotiate a budget, write acceptance and rejection letters, copyedit the accepted stories, design the cover, lay out the interior, and manage the book launch—including a formal gala at the university.
The previous year's cohort went further: they created four books to support the Elk River Writers Workshop, an indigenous-taught writing workshop in Montana that had lost its federal arts grants. The students built and ran a Kickstarter that raised roughly $10,000 and saved the workshop. Kevin noted that twelve to fifteen graduates have gone on to run successful Kickstarters of their own.
On the genre fiction side, Johanna described a thesis project that requires students to draft a novel or short story collection with publication as the explicit goal. Each student works with an assigned writing coach from brainstorming through final draft, and the finished projects are designed either for querying agents or for independent publication. Several thesis projects are currently out on submission, and several more were being prepared for indie release.
GENRE FICTION CHANGES THE WORLD
Johanna made the case that genre fiction has historically driven cultural change—from LGBTQ+ romance built on the backs of small and indie publishers before traditional houses recognized the market, to LitRPG as an entire form created by indie authors blending genres in ways traditional publishing would not have permitted. Kevin reinforced the point with his own experience: traditional editors used to forbid genre-blending because bookstores would not know which shelf to put it on. Indie publishing removed that constraint entirely.
Both described this as what Kevin calls the golden age of publishing—an era when writers have more career paths available than ever before. Kickstarter, Patreon, direct sales at comic cons, library talks, hybrid trad-indie careers—the options multiply in ways that did not exist even a decade ago. The programs aim to prepare students for all of them.
HYBRID CAREERS AND BUSINESS FUNDAMENTALS
The genre fiction program prepares students for both indie and traditional paths. They learn to write queries, prepare pitches (this year, with a live agent session), read contracts, understand tax obligations, and build author platforms. Kevin's publishing program complements this with deep dives into printing, distribution, copyrights, and the full mechanics of indie production.
Kevin acknowledged that some students arrive wanting only the indie track and resist learning the traditional side. His response: even if you want to be a rock star, you should still understand classical music. Understanding how printing, distribution, and bookstore economics work gives indie authors a foundation for making better decisions about their own businesses.
COMMUNITY AS INFRASTRUCTURE
Both Kevin and Johanna emphasized that community is central to the program's design. The low-residency format—one week in person each July in Gunnison, Colorado, with the rest conducted asynchronously online—draws students from around the world, including a current student studying from Denmark. Students frequently cross between the publishing and genre fiction programs, and many stay connected to the community long after graduating.
Kevin also described Superstars Writing Seminars, which he co-founded with Brandon Sanderson, Eric Flint, David Farland, Rebecca Moesta, and James A. Owen roughly sixteen years ago as what he calls the original business-of-writing conference. The same community-minded ethos—rising tides lift all boats, share what you learn—runs through both Superstars and the university programs. Applications for the summer 2026 cohort are open now, with online classes beginning in June and the residency week in July.
This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today my guests are Kevin J. Anderson and Johanna Parkhurst. How are you doing?
[00:00:06] Johanna: Doing well.
[00:00:08] Kevin: having us on.
[00:00:09] Matty: I am pleased to have you here and just to give a little introduction of you for our listeners, Kevin J. Anderson has published more than 190 books, 58 of which have been national or international bestsellers with over 24 million copies in print in 34 languages. He’s written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, which, I think is very interesting because I just got a chance to talk with Jonathan Maberry about media tie in work.
Too many original works, novels and series to mention all this. In addition to editing anthologies writing comics and games and composing the lyrics to three rock albums,
Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta, are the publishers of WordFire Press, and he is the director of the graduate program in publishing at
And Johanna Parkhurst, who also writes as J.E. Burke, is the author of award-winning and bestselling fiction and romance, and primarily writes stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters. She’s been published traditionally by small presses and also via her imprint, Maple Mountains Press. She’s a Colorado Book Award winner and a Rainbow Romance Award winner, and she’s also a longtime teacher recognized as Faculty of the year at Pueblo Community College and as faculty mentor of the year at
And for people who are listening carefully to those two bios, I think you will, notice the commonality there, which was Western Colorado
[00:01:27] Matty: So I am very pleased to have, Kevin and Johanna on the, podcast to talk about Western Colorado University’s master’s program in publishing and genre fiction, which I think is, is, a unique offering among the educational opportunities for writers out there.
And so I’m just gonna first of all throw it open and ask you guys to describe what is the Western Colorado University Master’s program in
[00:01:51] Kevin: Uh, well, Western Colorado University is, is a huge university and, well, no, it’s, it’s, it’s a small University of the mountains of Colorado. but it doesn’t really matter that much because all of our teaching is,low residency and it’s almost all
[00:02:07] Kevin: look, I, I got out of college with my va, my bachelor’s degree, and I went right off into being a writer.
And I published novels traditionally and, and had a big full career for it. We never really felt you needed to have a master’s degree to be successful writing genre fiction or publishing stuff like that. but this program came about. I, I formed the publishing program. About seven years ago when they approached me and asked if I would, put together a,
And I said, well, only if I can teach the stuff that I wish somebody had taught me when I was learning it. And I’ve been doing this for decades in traditional publishing and I form my own indie. Imprint kind of at the beginning of indie in 2009 when people were just starting it. And so I’ve got a whole track record in both traditional publishing, very
And, I put together this program that I, I think is unlike anything else in any other university. ’cause we teach half and half full traditional publishing and we teach them all indie publishing and. I learned all this stuff over the course of 40 years, but we kind of organized it so
it’s kind of start to finish organized, and I’m not an academic at all. I wanted to teach people. Like practical how to do stuff that when they come out of the publishing program, they know every step from start to finish of creating and publishing their book, designing their cover, uploading it, advertising it, running Amazon ads, doing everything so
Something at the end of it. And when I joined Western Colorado University, they also had a program that taught an MFA in genre fiction. And most MFAs are it’s Master of Fine Arts. And so they were teaching, you know, literature and, and not. Westerns and romances and mysteries and science fiction, and I just thought that was really cool that they
And, Johanna wasn’t the person running it at the time, but she’s now, and I’ll, I’ll punt it over to you to talk about what, what genre
[00:04:19] Johanna: Yeah. Thank you Kevin.
[00:04:20] Johanna: I, I jokingly say that I can talk about this program all day long because similarly to what Kevin just said, this is the program that I looked for years ago and couldn’t find. This is the program I always needed. I’ve been a teacher for a long time, but I’ve
And when I was looking for MFA programs. There wasn’t anybody who was interested in working with me on what I really wanted to write. you know, I’ve, I’ve loved genre since I was very small. I love all different types of it, and I just wanted to play in genre blends and I wanted to write romance and I wanted to write mystery, and I wanted to
And it was very hard when I was first. Starting out on this track to find those programs. so my soapbox for this program is if you love genre and you believe that your writing has a space in the world and you wanna be a part of a community of. Many other writers who love genre as much as you do and who wanna study what it means to read like a writer and study the best genre fiction, the most successful genre fiction, really
This is the place for you. because something that I think Kevin and I and all the directors at the graduate program of Creative Writing believe we all believe very strongly in community, community is incredibly important to us. We believe that rising tides lift all boats.
They should be setting you up for a lifetime of art and a lifetime of a success doing what you love to do. We have a lot of students who study genre fiction and publishing in either order. Kevin jokingly calls it the learn how to write a book and then learn how to publish it track, but it’s actually pretty accurate, right?
That’s basically what it is. we were just talking about this last night in class. Actually, several of my genre fiction writers came over from publishing. One of them was showing off a Kickstarter that she just finished and we were talking about, you know, the succession of being able to really study both and practically walk out into the world feeling like not only have you built more skills or advanced your skills, because we have a lot of writers in this program who have long and storied careers, and they come because they love learning and they
Grow and they wanna build a deeper community. and they were talking about the practicality of that piece, how you can build this community and you can come out knowing how to do a Kickstarter and write a great book that will keep those readers from your Kickstarters engaged with
[00:06:32] Johanna: And we’re a residency like Kevin was saying. So a big part of our sort of ethos is we believe writers should come from everywhere. That you shouldn’t be limited in what you can study because of where you are. So we all meet in person one week. A year in Gunnison, Colorado, which is beautiful in July, I have to say.
And the rest of the year everything’s online. It’s over Zoom, just like this. It’s in discussion boards, it’s in other online spaces. So we have students from all over the world. I have a student studying in Denmark right now. Kevin actually got to visit her when he was at a Comic-Con there recently, which is very cool.
[00:07:05] Kevin: Actually, I wanna pick up on that, just the idea. can you imagine, think in your head what, what an MFA program is? Can you imagine an MFA program at a, some other university teaching you how to build and run a Kickstarter? I mean we, I’ve got a Kickstarter running right now at Launched yesterday, but my students shadowed me the whole time as, as I built it.
They watched the, i I made them collaborators and they’re inside the back office watching me put all the stuff together and doing the BackerKit ads and, and the pre-launch stuff. And then they launched it and they’re helping to promote it and we’re going through this and, and we
[00:07:41] Matty: That’s fantastic.
[00:07:42] Kevin: but that they’re actually learning how to. Do this stuff and last year’s group of students for, for publishing. Instead of just watching me do a Kickstarter, we actually put one together ourselves that there is a, the Elk River Writers Workshop, which is a, an indigenous taught writing workshop up in Montana.
And they had, surprise, surprise, a bunch of their federal, arts grants. canceled. So they weren’t gonna survive. They couldn’t run this workshop. And so our publishing students put together four books, like the collected stories from the people who attended there and, and a book
And so they created and published four books that they ran the Kickstarter for. They raised something like \$10,000 and saved the workshop. And that’s what their classwork was. They built and ran a Kickstarter and now they all know how to do it. And I think of my publishing grads, we’ve had like 12 to 15 of them that went off to do their own Kickstarters that were successful and we’re just very much
They wanna be able to hold up a book and say, yes, I know how to make this. Rather than that, they wrote a thesis paper somewhere that. Nobody will read that. This is really practical stuff that we just try to teach
[00:08:54] Johanna: I was just gonna say on the genre side of the practicality piece, our thesis project is writing a novel or short story collection for your goals as a publication. So the goal is that you’re walking out with a project that you can either query to agents if you wanna go in a trad direction with it, or if you’re studying Kevin’s
Publish yourself. And those thesis projects are written with writing coaches every step of the way. So you have a very specific coach who’s assigned to you on the MFA track who works with you throughout the whole process, from brainstorming all the way to the very end. and we, you know, we’re really excited.
We have several out in subs, several being planned for independent publication right now. Like, this is the work that our students are doing, like Kevin was saying, like, we are, we all want to be working in this industry together in whatever fashion that means for our students.
[00:09:39] Matty: Yeah, I really like the practicality of it. I’d love to dive into a few more examples of the kind of, actual work the students are doing. I’m curious about on the writing front, Johanna. How does the program, how does the work of refining one’s writing differ in your program than it would in a traditional MFA, beyond?
I mean, obviously the, the work that’s being studied is different, but then can you describe differences in how the students act on the work
[00:10:10] Johanna: Yeah, I mean, I think the similarities are in the fact that we’re trying to build a community of authors who help lift one another’s writing up, right? So we do workshops just like any other MFA does. But one of the things that we specifically do in our workshops. Or try to do is we try to make them really open spaces where
So there’s some traditional MFA formats out there where you’re kind of sitting in silence and being told what’s right or wrong about your story. But since we’re functioning in genre spaces where we want readers and writers to be able to communicate across what’s working.
Our workshops are kind of designed around what works best for the author. So different authors run different types of workshops in every story they’re producing across. Every genre we study is an opportunity for publication. Kevin’s program, the publishing program, puts together an anthology. Every year they get a massive numbers of submissions.
I think they had something like 999 last year. I am so proud to say that. I think seven or eight. Kevin, correct me if I’m wrong, of the
[00:11:10] Kevin: think seven previous and current students got in there and they got i’ll, I’ll talk about the anthology in, in a minute, but that’s what I would like to point out though, is that you’re, they might come in going, I want to be a fantasy writer, but you make them understand how romance works, how westerns work, how mysteries work, and they have to write a mystery story.
They have to write a romance story and they. they actually learn how to do it, and some of them have excelled outside of the genre that they
[00:11:38] Johanna: One of my funny stories about this is, so I am a romance writer and every genre has. Folks who are like, I love that genre. I don’t engage with that genre. Right. And there’s always a few folks who come in with romance, like, I’ve never read a romance before. And it’s always so funny to me. I think I’ve had three students who had never written a romance where romance ended up being their very first publication because they just fell in love with a genre.
When Kevin did a romance anthology in the program a few years ago, we had so many submissions from out of that workshop. Yeah. I was really proud that I, I think, yeah, I think believe it is eight. genre fiction, former and past writers are in that anthology this year, ’cause several
The goal is that, as Kevin said, they’re writing in every genre. They’re playing with genre blends. They’re looking at where they can take new ideas from what they’re reading. Because we read a lot in our program. The writers will tell you so much of how you learn to develop
Right? Like, how do you read like a writer? What are you studying in other people’s crafts? So we’re reading the bestselling romances, we’re reading the best. Selling mysteries. We’re reading the bestselling thrillers, we’re reading the bestselling sci-fi. we’re reading the interesting and new genre blends of sci-fi and fantasy, and we’re talking about what makes them work, what makes them tick.
What is it that you can take from these books and bring into your own craft so that you can write this new story and something you’ve never written before, and you can submit it to the WordFire anthologies and
[00:12:57] Kevin: You mean an MFA program that makes them read bestselling fiction? How, how dare you. How? How dare you.
[00:13:03] Johanna: People laugh so hard when I tell them what we read in our program. a few titles from this year have included, I’ll just throw some of it out there. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is on that list. Rebecca Roanhorse is on that list. oh my gosh, so many. And we change them every year.
We change our book lists every year to reflect what’s coming out and what’s moving up. We’re in the horror unit now, so
[00:13:24] Matty: Do you get in touch with the authors of those books? do they know that, that their books are being used as, academic
[00:13:31] Johanna: Yeah, we have several speak and it’s, I remember when we invited Cat Sebastian, who is a really well-known, queer romance writer. She was like, you’re asking me to speak my, my book’s being used in an MFA book? I was like, yes, it really is.
[00:13:44] Matty: probably a, an item they didn’t even realize
[00:13:48] Johanna: She was, she was thrilled and she was such a great guest. Yeah, we have some amazing speakers who are just so excited to be able to come in and, and see the ways that their books are being
[00:13:56] Kevin: Well, and that is one of the things like Matty, you, you, you and I have interacted for a long time and I’ve been involved in the industry. So we can bring in like the captains of industry to just be guest speakers for us. And we have major bestselling authors and like the heads of Audible and the heads of Draft2Digital and, and like all.
All the people that are in our space. And it’s a, it, it’s kind of cool when I think of it ’cause we are just a little university, but we’re getting all these, these Titan speakers that are, that are there and, let I, I’d like to talk a little bit about what we.
[00:14:33] Kevin: What our, our main project is for the publishing people is that, they put together an original anthology every year.
And again, this is the learning how to do stuff from start to finish. And we get a, a really, really nice grant every year from Draft2Digital. And they, they, they give us, a, a nice chunk of money that we can use to pay professional rates for. An original anthology and the students come up when they meet in summer, they get together and they brainstorm and come up with, this is the anthology they wanna edit.
And the one that they’re working on this year is called Into the Deep Dark Woods. And they wrote up their, their description, their call for submissions. They, they send it out and posted it. Everywhere in the writers’ groups and Author Nation and, and successful indie author and all these different places, and we get submissions because we’re paying
So people are writing stories and they’re sending ’em in and into the deep dark woods. We got 998 submissions that came in and the students. They read the slush pile that they’re broken into teams, but they go through and they read them and they reject them. They clear through, and then they do another cut, and they reject the next round and then and the next round, and they get down to what we call the thunderdome call with two stories enter and one story leaves because they, they have to
Which ones they can have because they have a budget. We’re, this is a business that you got this much money and you can buy this many words. And that what usually happens is they’re like 80 stories that they wanna buy and they can only buy 26 and then they have to fight over which, which ones. And that is incredible learning spirits for them because they realize all 80 of those stories were perfectly good and
But they still got rejected and they really learned a lot from their own writing. Like, wait, just ’cause they got rejected, maybe it didn’t mean the story was terrible. And then they, they write the last rejections, they write the acceptance letters. They send out the contracts. They, they work with the authors to copy edit them.
they work to design the cover. They lay it out and we make them get vellum. So they all learn how to use vellum. And then we publish the book and we run, they develop Canva ads and they put it out. And then the following summer in Gunnison, when they all get together for their second time, we have this really cool gala book launch at the University Center, and it’s kind of all black tie.
I wear my, my tux and, and Allison Longueira, my co-pro professor, wears her cocktail dress and everybody kind of gets dressed up and we have like 300 people there that come in and, and they, they sell their books and they, they buy the books and, Oh, and, and the students also produce
It’s like a reissue of a classic of literature that they do from start to finish, but here’s kind of a little off the radar, which I think is one of the most interesting things that they learn. So after that big book launch, so they publish their anthology, they publish their classic books, we print them up and we sell ’em at the book launch.
[00:17:28] Kevin: Well, there are three parties that make money when a book is published and sold. The publisher makes money. So that’s Word fire Press. That’s my publisher publishing house. The author makes money, in this case it’s Western Colorado University. ’cause they get the royalties and the bookstore makes money and we have a separate bookstore entity that, so the bookstore buys the books, that 40% discount from the publisher the way any bookstore does with any
And they buy all these books. We put them out, we sell them that night, and then we run this whole spreadsheet together afterward. Where you figure out exactly how much money did the publisher make for all these books that we printed up and sent into this book event. And then how much money did the author make the Western Colorado University for their
And how much money did the bookstore make because they had to buy them and then they resell them and they get to see like, like with actual numbers with the books that they handed in their own hands. This is how much the publisher made, how much the author made, and how much the bookstore made. And invariably every single year, it’s the bookstore
the bookstore has the most risk though, because they have to buy all these books. And if there’s a tornado that night and nobody shows up, well, then they’re stuck with all this inventory that they can’t sell. So it’s, again, that’s just, it’s, it’s a very long description of how, how practical and pragmatic this stuff is.
[00:18:51] Matty: Well, I do really like the idea of them getting some direct exposure to the business side of, the writing and publishing world. And I do just wanna second that idea that having that exposure to the editorials. Side of being the person who’s having to read and accept or reject stories, I think is so valuable and, really highlights
And there’s so many other things that go into whether you get an acceptance or whether you get a rejection. I think it’s great that they
[00:19:22] Kevin: To go back to what Johanna was saying before, a lot of the submissions, do you require your students to submit to our
[00:19:30] Johanna: I don’t require, but it works out really well. your deadline is always right after one of our first workshop.
[00:19:33] Kevin: So. these stories come in and because some of her students were actually the editors the previous year, they learned so much about what catches your eye in the slush pile and what doesn’t
I think we had seven or eight in this coming one. And this was on their own merits. ’cause they come in basically blind and people are reading all these submissions and out of 998 submissions. seven or eight of the current students got in there on their own merits because their stories
[00:20:05] Matty: That’s very cool.
[00:20:09] Matty: One of the things you had said earlier, Johanna, about the, submitting to, traditional publishing outlets. I can see obviously all the things we’re talking about, about the, the practical end of if somebody wants to. be it like a solo, indie, author, publisher, then this is gonna equip them well for it.
Can you also talk about in what way it, equips them better for an
[00:20:29] Johanna: I mean, to borrow a quote from Kevin, he likes to say this is the golden age of publishing. And I would agree because authors have more opportunity than ever, so we wanna sort of.
[00:20:37] Johanna: From the genre fiction side of things, and this is similar to how Kevin approaches things in the publishing program. We wanna sort of prepare our writers, those who are either in the field or are thinking of advancing in different areas of in the
so like I teach the business class and the genre fiction, side of the house for example. And we do a lot of combination with Kevin. We do a lot of speakers together and things like that. ’cause there’s a lot of crossover and in that business course. We’re essentially preparing them for what are the practical things you need to know to exist in both of these worlds so that whatever your career brings to you, you can move
We’re seeing more and more indie authors also pick up trad contracts, particularly for their print works that’s, you know, becoming more and more popular. We’re seeing more and more TRA authors also want to have an indie side to their career. You just don’t know where this golden
[00:21:25] Johanna: So in the business class, we kind of prep everybody for how to write queries. How to do a pitch. we’re actually piloting something this year where we have an agent coming in directly and doing pitches with the students in the class. and we were very lucky to be able to do that. The projects don’t always align that way that they can come into class and everybody’s project will work for the same agent, but it did this year.
So we’re trying that this year. But either way, we prepped for all of that. We prep for the pitches. We make sure they know how to read contracts that are gonna come their way. You know, that’s something that. Kevin also covers again in publishing. So we’re really trying to set them up for everything. And then those that wanna go down more of an indie route, if the publishing track is good for them, that’s very often where they’ll also study there so they can go more in depth
but at least they leave feeling like they know how to build a platform. They know how to exist in these different realms and they know what they don’t know because I think that’s. Such a difficult part about being a writer. You know, I remember when I was first starting out, and even as my career has grown, the hardest part is always you don’t know what you
Like if nobody tells you. I, we were, we had a CPA on a call the other night and I was thinking about these horror stories we used to hear and still sometimes do about like debut authors who get these big contracts, you know, kind of win the literary lottery and don’t know that they have to pay taxes on that so they like blow the whole check on paying
Then tax time comes up in trouble, right? Because you don’t know what you don’t know. So we’re trying, hopefully, in these classes to not only prepare you for the craft side of this world, but what the practicalities of everything else are going to feel like. And what I, I, you know, I don’t say pros and cons in either a positive or negative
Everything publishing, every publishing path has pros and cons, so we’re sort of trying to. Give them the foundation of understanding, like when you’re looking at a project and thinking about what is the best path for this project, making sure they know the why and the how of how to approach that path, if that makes sense.
[00:23:12] Matty: Well, I do like the idea that you’re covering both Indie and rad because I always try to spread the word that you, a writer shouldn’t. Think about making a choice for their career. They should think about making a choice for each work and then further each format and further each geography and you know, all the other ways you
So having a pool of knowledge about all the options available, I think
[00:23:36] Johanna: So well.
[00:23:37] Kevin: And we, we’ve had some, like more militant indie authors going like, well, I don’t wanna learn the trad side. And I go, guys, if you wanna be a rock star, you still should understand classical music. And, and there’s so much in trad just the bookstore distribution and copyrights and contracts and, and just, just printing
Look at all the options we have now with BookVault and with, with,other print on demand things and, and fancy vendors. You have to know how printing works and, and all the various things that you have. And, and yes, if you are a very ambitious indie author, you can go on a million different writers groups and, and Facebook groups, and you can go to conferences and you can learn all of this stuff in a completely random
F, but what, what we offer is like, okay guys, we’re gonna start, start here and we’re gonna give you this whole organized. Game plan to go through and, and finish it. A
[00:24:33] Kevin: nd, and just because Johanna and I field a lot of these questions, I’m gonna preempt one and just mention that the stuff that we’re teaching, because it is low residency and all online, most of it is asynchronous, which means you, you do it on your own time.
And yes, there are zoom calls that we meet ourselves in class, but mainly you’ll be given, here’s your work or here’s your lecture, here’s your reading that you have to do, and you do that on your own time. And a great many of our students in publishing, and I think a lot of them in genre as well. they’re not like white-eyed kids fresh out of undergrad, that these are people who have already established their careers and they’ve got a full-time job, they’ve got families, they’ve got other things, and they’re still putting this on top of it.
And they managed to do it. And, you know, to me, to them it’s, it’s something feasible to do. and just the, the pragmatic thing, so for publishing, it’s a one year program, so it starts in July. June, some online classes, and then it ends the following July, and the, the total cost is 27,000, I think.
[00:25:36] Kevin: And the, well, you talk about genre, it’s an MA
[00:25:42] Johanna: Yeah, so we have the one year or the two year option. So the one year is very similar to the track, Kevin, just. It’s basically. June to July. and that’s the master’s degree. And the master’s degree is basically what I like to call the genre bootcamp. It’s that first year of you’re deep dive studying every genre you’re
You’re building these great workshop communities where you’re getting a lot of feedback on your work. You’re conferencing with your instructors, really figuring out how to grow your craft. We do have some students, some writers who just do the MA and then they graduate from that year. The majority of the genre fiction writers tend to do the two year program, the MFA program.
Because the second year is when you do the short forms course, which is a deep dive into some other forms. the novelette, flash fiction, things like that. The business course that we were just talking about. There’s also a pedagogy course in there that sort of helps prepare those who wanna go into classrooms because MFA is a terminal degree, or those who just wanna be really strong conference speakers and create things like this, right?
Create spaces where other writers can learn from them and continue to push their work forward. And that’s the year you’re writing your thesis, your novel project with your, with your mentor. So the majority of our writers tend to do the two year program, although there are a few
It really just depends on goals, right? Like what are you in the program for? What are you looking to get out of it? What are you, what do you wanna achieve? What is, what is your variation on, you know, we were talking about ROI. What does ROI look for you and look like for you?
[00:27:05] Johanna: And we do have students who cross and we’ll do like the MA in publishing and the MA in genre or the MFA in genre and the MA in publishing. We also have a nature writing program, poetry program, a screenwriting program. So we have multiple students who will
I’ve had students go on to study screenwriting or come to us from screenwriting. I think Kevin has a screenwriter going to publishing this year. We also, we are a small and very tightly knit community, so you get to know the other instructors in the program once you’re there, and we have a lot of folks who stay because they love the community we’ve
[00:27:36] Matty: I do think that the idea of being able to be part of this, very, Both like high powered audience, both among the instructors and the student body. and also a very committed group. Obviously committed because they’re making this commitment to the program is great. And I, I know that there’s a certain amount of
I recognize it’s not part of the program, but I think that that idea of community, it’s like a great adjunct offering. and I’d love to give
[00:28:08] Kevin: Superstars writing seminar. Something that I founded with Brandon Sanderson, Eric Flint, David Farland, my wife Rebecca Moesta, and, and we brought on James A. Owen. We, this was, I call it the OG Business of Writing Conference. ’cause like 15, 16 years ago, we all got together and talked business and we said, how come there
This was long before Author Nation long, before 20Books to 50K. And so we, we did Superstars writing seminar to. To teach people about contracts and ips and, and Eric Flynn, our, our first year he did this, this talk about this, you know, I think we should pay attention to this
And, and he was the only one that was even doing anything with it. And, what, what developed out of that and Superstars has grown, we’re now a pro non-Pro 501(c)(3) nonprofit. what the best thing that came out of that is our full on nurturing community. Mindset that everybody there is like on the same team and they wanna learn and they want, and you, you’ve seen indie authors out there that indie authors are so different from what most professionals are in that they, you can’t stop them from sharing the stuff that they learned that they’re so eager to, to like, oh, look what I found out.
Look what I mean. Like most other people are like, no, it’s trade
[00:29:38] Kevin: But that’s not indie authors, and that’s what superstars is and that’s what we are at Western Colorado University too, that it’s very much a, well, it’s a little subversive that I want to talk about because we, We are teaching people how to remake the entire publishing industry and, and you know that as indie authors, that what we’re, there are a lot of people in publishing, in traditional publishing, and I still know a lot of them in traditional public, like the, my editors at the Big Five and my, my Big New York agents and
They still don’t quite understand what’s going on out here that they, they cannot believe that you can make a lot of money on Kickstart Kickstarter for a project that they couldn’t sell to another publisher. I had one of those two years ago where I, I did a seven volume set of my collected reprint, short stories, and I asked my, my agent and I said, well, would, would you be able to sell this?
He said, nobody would want a reprint set of your short stories and not seven volumes. And I said, okay. And I ran a Kickstarter and made \$80,000 for it. And he’s still like. I was speaking a different language, and we really want to be, we want to get respect for genre fiction and academia, and I’ll let Jo Johanna talk about that.
I wanna get respect for indie publishing in academia because other programs will, you can get an MFA that will teach you how to go work for the Big five publishers, but there aren’t that many jobs out there anymore. What we’re finding is among our applicants, they don’t really
They wanna learn how to be indie publishers themselves, or at the very least, to be hybrid so that they know both sides of the fence. And, and Johanna, you were the same way, where we’re like, well, wait, how come other MFAs don’t teach genre fiction? That’s what people wanna read.
[00:31:18] Johanna: Yeah.
[00:31:18] Johanna: I mean our kind of our, our longstanding slogan in this program is genre fiction changes the world, and Indie publishing has allowed genre fiction. To change the world. We should put that on T-shirts, Kevin.
[00:31:29] Kevin: Oh, I like that. I got it.
[00:31:31] Johanna: But it’s, it’s true, right? Like we, when we look back at the course of history and we really think about various literary content that has changed society and moved society forward,
And yet for some reason. We don’t talk about it the same way in academia that I think we should be. and when we look at how genre fiction has been allowed to change and move spheres, I mean, I’m, I’m a product of one of those circles. LGBTQ+ romance is a space that only really existed or only has sort of existed and has kind of changed how we talk about romance and how we talk about the way that people communicate with one another and what it means to be accepted included
If you’re not in a, you know, very traditional looking. Relationship. That’s the kind of thing that was built on the back of small publishers and indie publishers. And then, quite frankly, I’ll just be honest here, right? Like one day trad publishing went, oh, there’s money over there. And all of a sudden you saw a lot of LGBTQ+ romance popping up
and that’s just one story, right? Like there’s. So many stories of how small publishers and indie publishers helped give rise. Another one that we talk a lot about right now is LitRPG and Lit. RPG is just an interesting example of an entire field of writers who basically created something because they were like, we can blend these genres and we can
We’re gonna like, make this form exist. And it exists out in the world. It changed the sphere of an entire genre because of indie publishing. I, I kind of have made an argument before that I don’t think LitRPG. Would have existed nearly as quickly or in the same way if it wasn’t
[00:33:01] Kevin: They wouldn’t have known how to publish it. And let me even go back to my trad days ’cause I was always loving to do genre mixing and cross genre things. And I like steampunk vampires and all that stuff and my editors would always slap my hand. I go, don’t mix genres because we won’t know which bookshelf to put it on in the
They that was you was really frowned upon to do any sort of genre blending. But indie authors are like, well, I don’t care. I’m just gonna put the keywords on there. And then people will find the steampunk, vampire, LGBTQ+ horror thriller novel or something like that. And guess what? The readers are there and they come out of the woodwork
And you know, that’s, as I said, and as Johanna said, this is the coolest time ever to get into publishing that we have, we have this, like, this whole treasure chest in front of us that we can do this, we can do that. And, when I was starting out, you basically had this lockstep path. You did this and then did this and did this, and you know, again, 99% of the people never made it to each next step.
And if you made it, then you had your career in traditional publishing. Well, now you can do all kinds. You can run a Kickstarter, you can have your Patreon, you can, you can publish your own books and find your audience. You can, I personally make a lot more money just going to my own comic cons and selling off my own table than I do by selling
Well, I make money there too. But, you can have a perfectly good career selling your books by doing library talks every month. And still nobody would’ve heard of you, but you’re making money at it. And there are
[00:34:45] Matty: I am curious as to, for each of your programs, what is one thing that your students learn and they wouldn’t learn it anywhere else, and it sort of lights them up. Like, what is the big, aha moment for them? Johanna, do you wanna take a crack at that question?
[00:35:01] Johanna: It’s a fun time for you to ask that. ’cause I was just reading their mid-semester reflections today. We happen to be in the middle of the semester, so I was just reading exactly that and in the first year, I think so many of the aha moments are really about what is possible in craft. And what that means for what they wanna do in
you know, a lot of the reflections I was reading today are like, wow, I’d never thought about doing this genre blend before. And now you know, this really cool idea for the story I just brought to workshop with this AI monster that falls in love and, you know, goes through these themes of what it means to be disenfranchised and modern society.
Now I know how to do it right? Like those are the most exciting reflections for me. Those, those craft aha moments of. This is something I didn’t know I could do in a space that I feel very comfortable doing now and or I wanna take that experiment, I wanna take that risk and I’m
I think that’s, you know, as a teacher too, that’s just one of the most exciting things you can see is that somebody’s really lit up with a writing idea. And the second year of my program, I think a lot of the aha moments are around their thesis project. So that’s the moment. Like whether it’s an aha from somebody who’s written eight different novels and tried something really, or 20 different novels for that matter, and tried something really new with their thesis of going like, oh, I
And here I am doing long form fantasy or the aha of the person who had done a lot of short form when they came to us, but had never actually written like an 80,000 word novel. And did it start to finish? Drafted it? You know, the way our process works, you’re essentially drafting a
And for some folks that seems, you know, really. Really complex and like a very big challenge when they first come. so that sort of aha moment, there’s so many different aha moments across the thesis project. I could go on all day, so I’ll let Kevin pick up.
[00:36:41] Kevin: Well, because we make them hands-on for their solo book, their classic book that they do. they do every single step from start to finish that they go in. Find an old book that they wanna reprint and they prove that it’s outta copyright. And then they either scan or obtain the text somewhere and then they proofread it and then they, they’ll edit it as they need to, and then they’ll, they’ll lay it out, inve em.
They will design their own cover, they’ll make their own ads for it. And now realistically we teach them, you’re not gonna wanna do every step of this, but I want you to know how to do every step of this. And some of them like. we had won this this year. It’s like, I never, ever
I’m good at it. and they had never even thought about doing. Graphic design and, just, just the beautiful books that you can make with, with velum and layout software. And I, I just gave them the printing masters for our into the Deep dark Woods anthology. ’cause I’m, I did that
And I’m playing around and just, if you pay attention, you add the little flourishes and the step back artwork on the title pages and, and just all this fancy stuff that. Trad publishers just don’t bother doing anymore. It’s the indie people that are making the pretty beautiful books and, and they’re, they’re laying out their own books and they
And, and in fact, they all just finished, all 12 students did their 12 covers, and we just shared with them, here’s all 12 year covers. And they were just like, like stunned. Wow. Look at how beautiful those covers are. And we did them ourselves. And, and that’s, that’s the cool. Aha moment that they realize and, and I myself still get that aha moment when, when our books are published and I hold it and I go.
I can’t believe I did this. I remember being a kid looking up to publishers as the Gods on Olympus because only they could make a book. And now I’m like, but I just made this one. And it’s prettier than anything that Bantam did or Harper Collins did, or Simon and Schuster did. And you know, I, I think that that’s a power that we have that is
[00:38:51] Matty: Well, I do, love the educational aspect that I think you guys are sharing information that isn’t available anywhere. I love this idea of expansion that people, who thought they were gonna, become romance writers, turned out to be thriller authors or whatever that might be. And I love the empowerment aspect of giving people the tools and the, and the confidence in order to.
Dive into all of these and, and understand it from all different perspectives. I think it’s just a, a wonderful program.
[00:39:17] Matty: And, please, I’d love to give you a chance to each share where, people can go to find out more about your programs. Johanna, can we start with you?
[00:39:26] Johanna: I mean, we should all be on the same page, so literally the same webpage. If you go to Western Colorado University graduate program for creative writing. I think we can give you a link for the show notes. Matty, you can access all the information about our different concentrations, all the information about how to apply.
Kevin and I are always happy to talk to interested writers. As you can tell, we love talking about this program, so it’s not hard. It’s
[00:39:51] Kevin: we are open for applications now. Classes start in, well, their online classes in June, and then the residency is in
So that’s when you would have to Be in Colorado for one week in July. and I think apps close at the end of May, so it’s, still got plenty of time, but not like forever time. And we would love to see some of you guys as our students this year. So either take genre fiction first and then publishing, or the other way around.
[00:40:21] Matty: And then you’ll, you’ll leave with the full,
[00:40:25] Johanna: And hopefully a lovely writing community and many years of. I, I like to think that we are one of the few MFA programs in the country that recently spent 20 minutes talking about the genres of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. I say that jokingly,
[00:40:41] Matty: Well, that’s gotta be the best ad for the program.
[00:40:48] Johanna: Thank you so much.