Podcast Show Notes

On The Indy Author Podcast, we discuss the writing craft, the publishing voyage, and how we can navigate our way to the readers who will love our books. Click the links below for the show notes for episodes since 200, including summaries and transcripts.

Matty Dalrymple 8/6/24 Matty Dalrymple 8/6/24

Episode 250 - From Firearms to Fiction with Chris Grall

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Chris Grall discusses FROM FIREARMS TO FICTION, including his book TRIGGER GUARD: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO FIREARMS. Chris shares the challenges he faced in creating consistent and accurate illustrations for his book, with some valuable do’s and don’t’s for authors with books that include illustrations; the attitude he brought to receiving feedback from his target audiences; and the goal of his book: to enable writers to write gripping and accurate firearms scenes.

Chris Grall is a retired US Special Forces team sergeant with 26 years of service. In 2007, he served as a technical advisor for Scott Sigler's book CONTAGIOUS, and since then, he’s shared his knowledge of firearms with authors via his consulting business, TactiQuill, and at conferences.

Episode Links

https://trigger-guard.com/
https://chrisgrall.com/
https://www.facebook.com/chris.grall.9
https://x.com/dtn8or

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Chris Grall about various facets of writing about firearms in fiction and the challenges he encountered while creating his book, "Trigger Guard." Chris shares his journey, from illustration and formatting struggles to gathering meaningful feedback for his work.

Matty Dalrymple, the host, sets the stage for an insightful conversation by detailing how she first met Chris, who has a unique background as a retired U.S. Special Forces Team Sergeant and a consultant on firearms for authors. Chris's journey culminated in the creation of "Trigger Guard," a comprehensive guide for writers on the usage and detailed aspects of firearms.

Illustration Challenges

Chris highlights how he tackled the illustrations for "Trigger Guard." He created the illustrations himself using PowerPoint, a process that turned out to be labor-intensive and time-consuming.

He explained, "It was painful. It would take me at least two or three hours just to do a single firearm, and I think there are a hundred and something drawings in there. It was horrible."

When Matty inquired whether Chris had considered using photographs instead, Chris clarified that maintaining consistency across all illustrations was crucial. He noted that stock images could have been expensive and inconsistent, thus justifying the choice to create his own graphics.

Choosing the Right Approach

Chris mentioned that with hindsight, he might have approached the process differently. Instead of illustrating sporadically, he would have initially examined all the firearms he planned to include to avoid unnecessary work.

"Through the editing process, that gun fell out of the book as a specific firearm I was going to talk about," Chris said, emphasizing the importance of forethought in the creative process.

Deadlines as Motivators

Chris attributed a significant part of his productivity to setting personal deadlines. His goal was to have "Trigger Guard" ready for purchase by ThrillerFest, a conference that he believed would be the ideal exhibition platform. He emphasized how having a deadline can enhance efficiency:

"There are points where you are a slave to the process and you have no control over how much time it takes for some things to happen."

DIY Publishing and Marketing Choices

The decision to indie publish "Trigger Guard" was influenced by Chris’s desire to get the book to the market quickly, especially considering its niche nature. Going the traditional publishing route could have delayed the book’s availability significantly, a luxury he couldn’t afford given the book’s specific audience.

“Trigger Guard is a very niche book. It’s not gonna be a New York Times bestseller... the faster I could get it out, the faster people could get access to it, use it, and hopefully not make mistakes.”

Content Creation and Layout

Chris provided a candid reflection on the initial decision to draft the entire book using PowerPoint, which made the editing process cumbersome. Illustrations and text elements would displace upon converting documents, causing significant headaches.

"The original sin of this book was to do the entire first draft in PowerPoint. It was a horror show."

Feedback and Iteration

Gathering feedback was another critical component of Chris's process. He sought insights from three distinct groups: authors, firearms experts, and general readers. This multifaceted feedback enabled him to fine-tune the book to serve various levels of firearms knowledge.

Balancing Detail and Readability

Matty and Chris also discussed the importance of balancing technical details with readability in fiction. Chris stressed that while writers need to possess detailed knowledge, they should be cautious about overwhelming readers with excessive technicalities.

"I like generic actions with specific firearms. You’re going to load a gun, you’re going to fire a gun, you’re going to aim the gun... That’s good enough for most scenes."

He recounted practical examples and mistakes, such as the common but incorrect portrayal of empty guns clicking, underscoring the importance of accuracy.

Inspirations for Fictional Gunfights

Chris shared case studies from real-life scenarios, such as the assassination attempt on Harry Truman, to illustrate the unpredictable and often chaotic nature of gunfights. These examples serve as valuable resources for authors aiming to depict realistic firearms scenes.

Conclusion

In summarizing the wealth of experience, Chris offers valuable advice for both writers and readers. Chris's approach to creating "Trigger Guard" and his candid reflections on the process provide strong takeaways for any author dealing with technical subjects in their writing.

"Trigger Guard is meant for anyone in the full array of firearms experience. You can use it as a resource or read it cover to cover."

Final Thoughts

Chris's journey exemplifies the intricate balance between technical accuracy and creative storytelling. His insights into the challenges of illustrative consistency, the importance of deadlines, and the necessity for diverse feedback make this podcast episode a must-listen for any author dealing with specialized topics.

For more, you can find Chris Grall and his work at ChrisGrall.com, Trigger-Guard.com, and his consulting venture Tactiquill.com.

Matty Dalrymple 7/30/24 Matty Dalrymple 7/30/24

Episode 249 - How to Keep Non-Fiction Fresh with Anna Featherstone

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I talk with Anna Featherstone about HOW TO KEEP NON-FICTION FRESH, including maintaining the human touch in an age of AI, the importance of fresh perspectives, effective book proposals, and integrating multiple viewpoints. Anna also emphasizes the need for authenticity, the strategic exclusion of outdated or overly technical information, and innovative formats that can enhance the reader's experience.

Anna Featherstone mentors and empowers writers who value practical, warm, wise, and creative advice during the various stages of writing, publishing and marketing their words. She is the author of five non-fiction books, a judge of the Australian Business Book Awards, and the non-fiction book advisor to The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). Anna is also the founder of Bold Authors, a collaborative online hub where publishing insiders share their insights about writing, publishing, and book marketing. When she’s not being bookish, Anna is a seedsaver, and into bees, beings, and the big issues of our time.

Episode Links

https://annafeatherstone.com/
https://www.instagram.com/annafeatherstonewriter/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-featherstone-writer/
https://www.threads.net/@annafeatherstonewriter
https://www.facebook.com/AnnaFeatherstoneWriter/
https://aus.social/@AnnaFeatherstone

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Anna Featherstone about her insights on how to keep nonfiction writing fresh and engaging. The discussion covers Anna's motivations for writing nonfiction, different strategies to maintain freshness, and suggestions for nonfiction authors to enhance their writing process.

Anna's Journey into Nonfiction
Anna Featherstone shares that her passion for writing nonfiction began with a deep love for exploring topics through writing. She emphasizes that the clarity and understanding she gains from writing help her make sense of the world. Anna appreciates nonfiction for its ability to develop empathy and provide insights into different perspectives.

The Importance of Freshness in Nonfiction
Anna believes that keeping nonfiction fresh is crucial for both writers and readers. A stale narrative can drive readers away and make the writing process tedious for the author. To combat this, Anna suggests putting a project aside if it starts feeling dull. She asserts that the energy and passion for a topic should be present from the beginning of the writing process, including during the creation of a book proposal.

Book Proposals as a Tool
Anna discusses the importance of writing a book proposal, even if it’s just for oneself. A book proposal helps in planning and gauging one’s commitment to a project. According to Anna, it includes the book's basic idea, market placement, target audience, marketing ideas, and potential experts for interviews. This process helps filter out projects that might not be worth pursuing and ensures that the writer’s enthusiasm remains high throughout the writing process.

Bringing Fresh Perspectives
One of the most effective ways to keep nonfiction fresh is by offering a unique perspective. Anna encourages authors to consider alternative angles that haven't been overexplored. For example, a book on knitting written by a man or a parenting guide co-authored by a teenager would bring unusually fresh viewpoints. Anna also emphasizes the value of choosing unique and lesser-known experts for interviews to avoid overused quotes and ideas.

Handling AI in Nonfiction Writing
The conversation touches on the role of AI in nonfiction. Anna shares her reluctance to use AI extensively in her projects, expressing concerns about losing the uniqueness of her fresh ideas to the machine. Instead, she prefers to keep her work original and authentic by relying mainly on tools like ProWritingAid for final cleanups rather than content generation.

Engaging with Sensory Details
Anna recommends incorporating sensory details to make writing more engaging. Describing experiences in a way that involves sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell can make a story come alive for readers. This technique can be applied beyond memoirs to other nonfiction topics, enhancing the reader’s connection with the content.

Collaborations and Multiple Viewpoints
Collaborating with others can add depth and freshness to a book. Anna gives an example of a memoir enriched by including perspectives from different family members. This multi-faceted approach can provide a more comprehensive and engaging narrative. Moreover, including interviews and case studies from a diverse set of people worldwide can expand the book’s appeal and marketing potential.

Practical Strategies for Marketing Nonfiction
Anna offers practical advice on marketing nonfiction work. She highlights the importance of bullet points and concise, targeted pitches when reaching out to bloggers, podcasters, and reviewers. She also suggests conducting interviews to gather content and marketing opportunities, recommending that authors leverage international interviews to gain fresh perspectives.

Evergreen Content vs. Timely Trends
Matty and Anna discuss the balance between creating evergreen content and capitalizing on current trends. While evergreen content remains relevant for a longer period, timely topics, such as AI, can attract immediate attention but may quickly become outdated. Authors need to be clear about their strategy and the lifespan they expect for their work.

Making Content Personal and Unique
To stand out, nonfiction should reflect the author’s unique voice and experiences. Anna jokes about using personal anecdotes, humor, and unique metaphorical structures to make the content more relatable and engaging. Matty shares how she used a nautical metaphor throughout her book to provide a fresh twist on the topic of podcasting.

Conclusion
Anna Featherstone’s advice centers on the principle that fresh, engaging nonfiction results from passion, unique perspectives, and smart planning. Whether through multi-sensory details, unique angles, or strategic collaborations, authors can keep their non-fiction vibrant and appealing to readers. Anna encourages writers to allow their individuality to shine through their content, ensuring their book stands out in a crowded market.

Matty Dalrymple 7/23/24 Matty Dalrymple 7/23/24

Episode 248 - Constructing a Multi-Layered Villain with Greta Boris

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Greta Boris discusses CONSTRUCTING A MULTI-LAYERED VILLAIN, including how analyzing villains in our previous works can help us understand what does and doesn’t work with readers and how characters' personalities, based on tools like Enneagram, influence their effectiveness as villains. We also explore examples of well-crafted villains from TV shows like Breaking Bad and movies like The Silence of the Lambs. Greta shares insights from her personal writing process and touches on the challenges and nuances of writing morally complex villains.

Greta Boris is the USA Today Bestselling author of The Mortician Murders, a ghosty mystery series, and the soon to be released Almost True Crime thriller series. She's also co-creator of The Author Wheel, producers of books, courses, and a podcast dedicated to helping writers overcome their roadblocks.

Episode Links

https://www.gretaboris.com
https://www.facebook.com/greta.boris/
https://podcast.authorwheel.com

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I talk with Greta Boris about the multifaceted nature of villains in storytelling. Our conversation explores various themes, from the allure of playful antagonists to the competition between heroes and villains, offering valuable insights for authors and storytellers.

The Multifaceted Villain

In our discussion, Greta emphasizes that a great villain often possesses layers beyond mere malice. She points out that memorable antagonists, like Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes series, captivate audiences not just through their deeds but through their complex personalities.

Playfulness and Competition

We discuss the playful nature of villains, using Moriarty as an example. This playful aspect makes the character's interactions with Sherlock Holmes more compelling. This is a broader trait found in other notable villains such as Hannibal Lecter, who engages in an intellectual game with his enemies. This playfulness, combined with a sense of competition, adds layers to their personalities, making them more engaging for the audience.

Beyond the Archetype

Our conversation also delves into the importance of moving beyond archetypical representations of villains. We discuss how adding unique traits and motivations can significantly enhance a villain's depth. For instance, a villain who sees their actions as a game can create a dynamic interplay with the hero, pushing the narrative in unexpected directions.

The Role of Perspective

We touch on how a villain's perspective can redefine the story. By exploring the villain’s mindset and motivations, writers can create more rounded characters whose actions, although villainous, are understandable within their own logic. This approach not only enriches the story but also challenges the audience to see the world from a different point of view.

Key Takeaways

1. Complex Characters: Villains with multifaceted personalities are often more engaging and memorable.
2. Playful Antagonists: Incorporating a sense of playfulness and competition can add depth to villain-hero dynamics.
3. Unique Motivations: Moving beyond archetypes and exploring unique motivations can enhance character development.
4. Perspective Matters: Understanding a villain’s perspective can add richness to the story and offer new angles for the narrative.

Matty Dalrymple 7/16/24 Matty Dalrymple 7/16/24

Episode 247 - Newsletter Marketing as a Creative Endeavor with Roz Morris

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Roz Morris discusses NEWSLETTER MARKETING AS A CREATIVE ENDEAVOR, including how authors can creatively integrate personal stories and ongoing projects into newsletters to engage readers. Roz shares her journey of finding the right content for her newsletter, emphasizing the importance of marketing the author alongside the books. She provides insights into using personal adventures and research anecdotes to connect with the audience. And we also discuss the benefits of interactivity, the role of social media groups, and maintaining a consistent creative output that resonates with readers.

Roz Morris’s novels and memoir have been recognized by major mainstream awards. She’s coached award-winning writers in both fiction and non-fiction, taught creative writing for The Guardian masterclasses, blogged for Writers & Artists Yearbook and been a regular judge on Litopia’s Pop-Up Submissions show, critiquing manuscripts from promising writers.

Episode Links

https://rozmorris.org/
https://www.facebook.com/roz.morris.7
https://twitter.com/Roz_Morris/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roz-morris-1102a019/
https://rozmorris.substack.com/
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3h2h6nqdtxe4liyqemetux5o
https://rozmorris.tumblr.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyqCAHoKUsq3FOHt5srTfvA/
Newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/rozmorriswriter

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, host Matty Dalrymple and author Roz Morris offer insights into how authors can effectively use newsletters not just for marketing their books, but also for engaging their readers on a more personal level.

Recognizing Marketing as Creative Work

Matty opens the conversation by addressing a common dilemma for writers: the perceived separation between creative work and marketing. She points out that Roz exemplifies how these two can be intertwined, particularly through her engaging newsletter. Roz highlights that her newsletter became a way to embed her creative process, making it relatable and interesting for her audience.

Roz's Goal for Her Newsletter

Roz shares her journey of struggling to find content for her newsletter initially. Influenced by advice from Joanna Penn, she started looking for a unique angle. She felt that most indie authors produced content rapidly, creating template-based newsletters about books, research, and inspirations. In contrast, Roz writes more slowly and in less defined genres.

No Template for Roz's Content

For a long time, Roz didn’t know what to put in her newsletter. Unlike other indie authors who published quickly and followed set templates, Roz struggled to find a model that worked for her. But she eventually found her groove by making her newsletters more personal and reflective of her creative life.

Opening a Window into Your Creative Life for Your Readers

Roz discovered that by sharing personal stories and insights into her creative process, she could keep her audience engaged. She recounts how a travel diary from 2016 led to an idea for a book, which she shared in her newsletter. This approach opened up a more personal way of connecting with her readers, making them feel part of her creative journey.

Marketing the Author as Well as the Works

The conversation shifts to the idea of marketing the author, not just their works. Roz emphasizes that readers are often invested in the author's unique perspective and style. Matty agrees, adding that newsletters succeed when they let the author's personality shine through.

Elements of Roz's Newsletter

Roz outlines the structure of her newsletter, which includes a personal story, updates on current projects, and an ongoing story about her life with her horse. This segmented approach keeps her readers anticipating more, fostering a deeper connection with them. Matty admires this formatting tactic, noting how it encourages readership.

The Challenge of One-Way Communication and Interaction

Matty shares her challenge with newsletters being a one-way communication channel. They discuss creating a two-way interaction by asking readers questions or opinions within the newsletter. This strategy might engage the audience and make them feel more connected.

Giving Subscribers a Glimpse into Your Creative Life

Roz shares an interesting practice: posting a picture of her desk every Monday on her Facebook author page, which asks followers what they are up to. This simple act keeps followers updated about her activities and provides them with a tangible connection to her workflow.

Whether to Differentiate Fiction and Nonfiction Platforms

Matty has separate platforms for her fiction and nonfiction work. She talks about the different content strategies she employs for each, reaffirming the necessity of tailoring content to specific audiences.

Exercising a Fundamental Writing Skill

Roz discusses how writing newsletters can sharpen other writing skills. The challenge of making everyday experiences interesting can help improve storytelling abilities, which can benefit all forms of writing.

Ideas for Newsletter Fodder for Fiction Writers

Matty brainstorms ways to enhance her fiction newsletter by sharing research and behind-the-scenes insights. She suggests including excerpts from her work-in-progress and personal experiences related to her writing research, making the newsletter more engaging.

Conclusion

This conversation between Matty Dalrymple and Roz Morris offers a treasure trove of practical advice for authors looking to improve their newsletters. By intertwining creative work with marketing, sharing personal stories and research, and making the process interactive, authors can cultivate a more engaged and loyal readership. Whether you are an aspiring writer or an established author, these tips can help you connect with your audience on a deeper level.

Matty Dalrymple 7/9/24 Matty Dalrymple 7/9/24

Episode 246 - The Secrets of World-Building: It’s the Small Stuff with Timons Esaias

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Timons Esaias discusses THE SECRETS OF WORLD-BUILDING: IT’S THE SMALL STUFF, including his insights into effective world-building for fiction, emphasizing the importance of small, non-generic details that enhance character development and scene-setting. He touches on the difference between immersive storytelling and simpler narratives and offers practical tips on how to gather and use unique details from ephemera, old books, and postcards to enrich a narrative. He offers guidance on balancing research with storytelling ... and on knowing when to stop.

Timons Esaias is a satirist, writer, and poet living in Pittsburgh. His works, ranging from literary to genre, have been published in twenty-two languages. He has been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award, and he won the Winter Anthology Contest, the SFPA Poetry Contest, and the Asimov's Readers Award (twice). He is a recent Pushcart nominee, and Intrepid Award winner for the story "To Do." His poetry collection is “Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek.” He collects chess sets.

Episode Links

https://twitter.com/EsaiasTimons
https://www.facebook.com/timons.esaias/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/867037.Timons_Esaias

Summary

The interview opened with an introduction to Timons Esaias, an esteemed satirist, writer, and poet. He's known for his diverse literary works published in 22 languages and his accolades, including being a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award and winning multiple writing contests. The conversation aimed to delve deep into the nuances of world-building and character development in fiction writing.

The Importance of Small Details
Timons began by emphasizing the importance of integrating small, meaningful details into both world-building and character development. He noted that focusing on particulars like adornments, everyday tools, and small personal items adds depth and authenticity to the narrative.

Quote: "One of the things I find missing in fiction is anybody wearing anything and any story behind it."

By concentrating on these finer elements, writers can convey much more about their characters and settings without overwhelming the reader with exhaustive descriptions.

Leveraging Playsearch for World-Building
Timons introduced the concept of "playsearch", a playful and exploratory approach to research. Instead of traditional research methods, playsearch involves flipping through old catalogues, postcards, and ephemera to draw inspiration and authentic details for fictional worlds.

Example: "For a science fiction setting, I can look at 1886 and go, okay, that's already changed. How will it change again by the time it's in my story?"

This method helps writers to add realism and depth to their settings by drawing on historical and cultural references.

Emphasizing Character Reactions
Timons argued for the importance of focusing on character reactions rather than exhaustive physical descriptions. Readers will naturally form their own mental images of characters, making it more impactful to describe how characters make others feel or react.

Quote: "We judge people in an instant when we meet them. And it's utterly unfair, but we do it."

This approach ensures that descriptions serve a narrative purpose and deepen the reader's engagement with the characters.

Using Cultural Exceptions to Establish Norms
Illustrating cultural norms through exceptions is another powerful tool Timons recommends. By showing what happens when something goes wrong or deviates from the norm, writers can effectively establish the rules of their fictional world.

Example: "You get somebody upset by the fact that it's not working, now we know what the rules are."

Strategic Research Approaches
While emphasizing the importance of research, Timons advised writers to write their initial drafts first and then conduct targeted research to fill in specific gaps. This ensures that time is spent effectively on indispensable details that contribute to the story.

Quote: "Write the story first, then research the things you need."

He also pointed out that different audiences require different levels of detail. Writers should balance the depth of their world-building based on whether their readers prefer immersive worlds or simpler, more focused storytelling.

The Role of Architecture and Maps
Timons discussed the value of books on architecture and maps as essential resources for sparking creativity and ensuring consistency in world-building. These resources offer insights into different time periods and cultural practices, helping writers create believable settings.

Example: "I have this history of London in maps... it's been useful, especially with students who are setting things in London."

Understanding the layout of streets and the architectural styles of different periods enhances the authenticity and inspires new ideas for settings.

Practical Insight: Matty mentioned how historical research helped him avoid mistakes, like discovering that a modern through street was not a through street in the past due to a fire. Such details honor the setting and improve the reader's experience.

Distinctive Character Development
Timons highlighted the importance of describing unique behaviors or possessions of characters instead of falling back on generic traits. This makes characters more memorable and authentic.

Quote: "Find a thing, or a behavior, that will reveal it."

By focusing on specific, revealing details, writers can avoid repetitive descriptions and instead use these to deepen character development.

Knowing When to Stop Researching
Recognizing when to stop researching and start writing can be challenging. Timons offered practical advice: if you feel drained by a story, it's likely you’ve gathered sufficient information.

Quote: "Psychologically, if you're shelving a story because you are just tired of it, it's probably tired of you."

This helps writers avoid endless cycles of research that don't contribute meaningfully to the narrative.

Effective Writing Techniques
Timons shared several practical writing techniques:

1. Start in the Middle: Captivate readers quickly by dropping them into the middle of the action and revealing the world's details gradually.

   Example: "With immersive settings, start in the middle. Have a lot of stuff going by that’s interesting but you don’t explain at first."

2. Infuse Meaning: Ensure every descriptive element in the story adds plot complexity or character depth.

   Quote: "Only if you're adding plot complexity in an interesting way or meaning should a thing be in there."

3. Secret Symbolism: Using secret meanings or symbolic elements, which might not be immediately apparent to readers, can give depth to the narrative.

   Example: Timons mentioned using a real map and fictionalizing its details to create an underlying structure of meaning.

Resource Recommendations
Timons recommended exploring museums and antique shops, as they often contain bins of old postcards or books that provide historical context and inspiration.

Quote: "Little bins full of old postcards... frequently, it’s not the main thing they’re portraying but what is parked next to it or what the gal in the front is wearing."

In addition, he suggested looking through travel guides and ephemera for insights into daily life and cultural practices that add realism to writing.

Conclusion
Timons’ approach to incorporating small, meaningful details, leveraging real-world inspiration, and using practical research techniques can help any writer elevate their storytelling. By focusing on these aspects, writers can create rich, immersive narratives that resonate with readers, making fictional worlds feel as real as the one we live in.

Matty Dalrymple 7/2/24 Matty Dalrymple 7/2/24

Episode 245 - Co-Authoring Fiction with LynDee Walker and Bruce Coffin

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This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I talk with LynDee Walker and Bruce Coffin about their experiences co-authoring the Turner and Mosley series. LynDee, an award-winning journalist and author of 19 novels, shares how her abundance of ideas led to the co-authoring opportunity with Bruce, a retired detective sergeant and best-selling novelist. The duo discusses how their collaboration began through mutual acquaintances, how they navigated the creative and logistical processes, and the unique methods they use to keep their writing cohesive. They highlight the importance of trust, creative synergy, and clear communication in a co-authoring relationship. With insights into blending their writing styles and managing different genres, both authors provide valuable tips for aspiring co-authors. The episode also delves into the development of their characters and storylines, emphasizing the fun and challenging aspects of writing collaboratively.

Episode Links

LynDee's Links:
lyndeewalker.com
facebook.com/lyndeewalkerbooks

Bruce's Links:
https://severnriverbooks.com/collections/bruce-robert-coffin
https://www.facebook.com/brucerobertcoffin
https://www.instagram.com/brucerobertcoffinauthor/
https://www.threads.net/@brucerobertcoffinauthor

Summary

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, I talk with LynDee Walker and Bruce Coffin about the intricacies and nuances of co-authoring fiction. Our conversation dives into the logistical, creative, and personal aspects of sharing the reins of a writing project.

Meet LynDee Walker

Our discussion begins with LynDee Walker, who provides listeners with an informative look into her book series and her collaboration with Bruce Coffin. LynDee introduces her fictional world, where strong women who find themselves frequently entangled in trouble take center stage. Her series, Turner and Moseley Files, co-authored with Bruce Coffin, brings a unique blend of adventure, mystery, and character dynamics.

Why Co-Author?

LynDee explains that the opportunity to co-author arose when she found herself overwhelmed with ideas but constrained by time. During a call with her agent, she discussed a concept involving young, resourceful characters who use their wealth and freedom to solve mysteries and embark on treasure hunts. Faced with her busy schedule, the suggestion to bring on a co-author seemed promising. This is when Bruce Coffin, a writer LynDee admired and trusted, was brought into the mix.

Testing the Partnership

To ensure compatibility, LynDee and Bruce decided on creating a sample chapter. This practice chapter allowed them to test the waters. Bruce initially had reservations, but the sample proved that they could indeed work harmoniously. LynDee recounts how Bruce’s wife, agent, and she herself were convinced about the potential success of their collaboration, eventually leading Bruce to agree fully.

The Creative Process

One highlight of the episode is LynDee’s detailed description of how the creative process is navigated. She generally takes charge of plotting and outlining, sending Bruce what she refers to as a "detailed outline." Initially, these outlines were extensive, running as long as 53,000 words for the first book. Bruce would then flesh out these outlines into full drafts, which LynDee would polish and enhance, a process that Bruce humorously describes as her "sprinkling glitter" on the manuscript.

Navigating Differences

LynDee emphasizes the importance of personal compatibility and shared vision in co-authoring. They had numerous discussions to ensure both had a unified outlook on the series' direction. The positive feedback from their editor and the seamless integration of their individual contributions were key indicators of their successful partnership.

Consider the Goal of Your Co-Authored Work

LynDee and Matty discuss the varying goals writers might have when co-authoring, from promotional crossovers to creating a cohesive series. This versatility allows for different methods of collaboration, whether focusing on seamless integration or showcasing distinct narrative voices.

Meet Bruce Coffin

Transitioning to Bruce Coffin, Matty underscores his impressive background in crime fiction and his decision-making process in joining LynDee for the Turner and Moseley Files. Bruce provides insight into his initial hesitations and how conversations with peers and his agent convinced him to embrace the opportunity, including an anecdotal endorsement from Reed Farrell Coleman.

Methods of Work

Bruce details how they handle the logistics of co-writing. Unlike some collaborations that involve shared online documents, Bruce and LynDee prefer keeping it simple with email exchanges of Word documents. This straightforward method works effectively for them, despite the copious file versions they each accumulate over time.

Bruce's Approach

Bruce’s approach to writing within the confines of LynDee’s outlines is both innovative and disciplined. He reads only as much of the outline as he requires for his current writing task, preserving a sense of discovery and excitement akin to reader engagement. This method ensures his creative freedom while respecting the plotted framework.

Differences in Genre

Bruce elaborates on the genre transition from detective procedurals to the more action-adventure style of the Turner and Moseley Files. This shift allowed for more imaginative and extreme scenarios, which can be liberating compared to the stringent realism required in crime procedurals.

Trust and Feedback

The element of trust is a recurring theme in their collaboration. Bruce highlights the importance of trusting each other’s instincts and decisions. Matty and Bruce agree that mutual respect and trust are crucial in successfully co-authoring fiction, ensuring that both partners feel confident and valued in their creative input.

Future Projects and Advice

Bruce teases his upcoming series, the Detective Justice Mysteries, which promises to retain the gritty, procedural essence of his previous work while introducing new dimensions and locales. When advising prospective co-authors, Bruce reiterates the significance of setting clear expectations and ensuring creative compatibility through honest and open conversations.

Conclusion

LynDee and Bruce's interview on The Indy Author Podcast provides insights into the art of co-authoring. From the technical logistics to the interpersonal dynamics and creative processes, their experience underlines the potential of collaborative writing when approached with mutual respect, clear communication, and a shared vision for the narrative.

Matty Dalrymple 6/25/24 Matty Dalrymple 6/25/24

Episode 244 - Understanding Your Book's Neighborhood with Nat Connors

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Nat Connors discusses UNDERSTANDING YOUR BOOK’S NEIGHBORHOOD, including the importance of understanding what books you want your book to appear next to and how authors can use data to guide their publishing decisions about positioning their books. We discuss wide versus KU, series versus standalone, pricing, cover design, blurbs, and compliance with genre conventions. We discuss the importance of tracking the best practices in your genre, how to solicit input from readers to get the most valid results, and using categories to educate the retail platforms about your books. And Nat has a special offer for listeners of The Indy Author Podcast!

Nat Connors is a romantic comedy writer, medical scientist, and dance teacher, and creator of the Kindletrends newsletter for genre fiction authors. Kindletrends started when he got fed up with trying to make sense of the Kindle Store and wanted a no-nonsense summary of the most important information. Nat uses the Kindletrends information to plan his own writing, publishing, and book launches, so it has to be focused, relevant and actionable.

Episode Links

https://kindletrends.com/
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https://x.com/kindletrends
https://www.youtube.com/@kindletrends

Fantasy 'State of the Nation', powered by Kindletrends: https://kindletrends.com/static/fantasy/ - a free interactive infographic for fantasy authors, referenced in our discussion.

Kindletrends newsletters: https://kindletrends.com - subscription is free for the first month, and you can cancel any time. Use the code 'INDYAUTHOR' on signup for a USD5 discount, making it USD10/month, forever.

Kindletrends free resources for authors:

Also Boughts Downloader Chrome Extension: https://kindletrends.com/download-also-boughts-chrome-extension/
Kindle Power Search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUP5I1hBq00
List of categories on the Amazon Store: https://kindletrends.com/categories/

Summary

The episode of The Indy Author Podcast, featuring Nat Connors, delves into numerous strategies for genre fiction authors to enhance their publishing decisions and optimize their writing processes.

Data Utilization for Authors:
Nat emphasizes the importance of authors understanding their genre's dynamics, recommending a breakdown of big data into manageable segments. He advocates for what he calls "market awareness," suggesting that authors periodically engage with market trends while balancing writing and promotional efforts.

Choosing Publishing Platforms - Wide vs. Kindle Unlimited (KU):
The discussion shifts to deciding between publishing wide (across multiple platforms) or exclusively through Amazon's Kindle Unlimited. This decision is noted as genre-specific, with some genres traditionally performing better on KU. Nat mentions how book length and author preference for marketing channels play into this choice, with tools like Draft2Digital facilitating multi-store marketing.

Series vs. Standalone Books:
Considering whether to write a series or standalone books is another focal point. Nat points out that series may benefit more from KU due to the binge-reading potential, whereas standalone books might appeal differently to the market. He also discusses the impact of series on book cover design, stressing the need for visual consistency across series.

Pricing Strategies:
The conversation touches on pricing strategies, highlighting the recent trends of increasing ebook prices. Nat discusses the strategic pricing of series books and the implications of Amazon’s pricing policies on royalties, advocating for pricing that aligns with perceived value and competitive positioning.

Cover Design and Market Trends:
Cover design is a critical topic, with Nat advising authors to revisit their cover designs periodically to align with current market trends. He recommends subscribing to reader-focused newsletters to understand visual trends and stresses the importance of covers in marketing and reader engagement.

Blurb Writing and Genre Conventions:
The role of book blurbs and the need to keep them updated with genre conventions is discussed. Nat suggests using AI tools like ChatGPT to refresh blurbs, while cautioning against losing originality.

Understanding and Utilizing Genre Categories:
Nat explores the significance of accurately categorizing books in online retail platforms like Amazon to ensure they appear alongside similar titles, enhancing visibility and sales potential.

Kindletrends and Author Resources:
Nat concludes by discussing Kindletrends, which provides genre-specific insights and trends to help authors make informed decisions.

Transcript

Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indie Author Podcast. Today my guest is Nat Connors. Hey, Nat, how are you doing?

Nat: Hi, Matty, it's great to be back!

Meet Nat Connors

Matty: It is lovely to have you here, and to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Nat is a romantic comedy writer, medical scientist, dance teacher, and creator of the Kindletrends newsletter for genre fiction authors. Kindletrends started when he got fed up with trying to make sense of the Kindle store and wanted a no-nonsense summary of the most important information. Nat uses the Kindle Trans information to plan his own writing, publishing, and book launches. So, it has to be focused, relevant, and actionable.

And I invited Nat back to the podcast, he's been a previous guest, to talk about the state of the genre. We're going to be talking generally about what is the data that every author should be tracking related to their own genre, but because it's always more fun to talk about something specific than something general and theoretical, we're going to be talking about fantasy.

I figured I talked so much about crime fiction, it was time to talk about something different. But if you're not a fantasy author, I would recommend you not tune out because the information we're going to be sharing is something that is applicable to really any kind of genre fiction that listeners may be working on.

How can authors use data to guide their publishing decisions?

Matty: And so, Nat, I'm just going to ask you to sort of step back and talk generally about how people should be looking at the data that's available to them out there, in order to better plan their writing and publishing work, and then we'll dive into the details of a couple of pieces of data that you specifically recommend people look at.

Nat: Yeah, sure. So, this is something that I've been thinking about for a long time, as Matty and many others will know, about how you go about getting your head around all of the things that are going on in your genre, and in your subgenre, and the specific environment that you're in, and I've got a bunch of stuff that I've written about this stuff. About ways to take a very big problem and divide it up into little chunks because when you're looking at a whole genre, something like fantasy, which has got so many different aspects to it and so many different moving parts, it can be a bit overwhelming. You read some books and you think, well, I like this, but do other people like this? Having a way of listing the things that I need to look at and the things I need to think about helps me feel like I'm getting around stuff and I'm not missing anything. One of the things I often say to people is that market research is an ongoing process if you're an author. In fact, I call it market awareness more than market research. I like to think of the fact that we need to be aware of our market, aware of what's going on around us. We make most of our time for writing because that's what we love, but we also have to look up from our keyboards occasionally and see what other people in our genre are doing, see how readers are responding to it, and think a little bit about how that affects us. So, I've got a few different things that I go through step by step when I'm looking at what's going on in my genre and we're going to do that sort of bit by bit with fantasy but to try and generalize it at the same time.

Wide versus KU

Matty: Well, one of the things that I think is top of mind for many authors who are deciding what route to take for their publishing is the whole question of wide versus KU. My understanding is that this is very genre dependent. There are just genres that have historically proven to do well in KU and genres that have not.

I think that would be a great point to start if people are deciding whether they want to go the KU route or not. What pieces of information do you recommend they be aware of in order to make that decision?

Nat: Yeah, that's a very good place to start, Matty. I think there's a bunch of factors, and some of those factors, just stepping away from the market, are also to do with you, the writer, and your own preferences for where you want to market and sell your work. and also for the length and the tempo at which you prefer to write.

I'd never want anyone to feel like they have to do a particular thing if they want to be in any genre. It's absolutely true that some genres have traditionally been quite heavily KU. We've also seen that changing, I think. And when we look at the fantasy, what we'll see is that there are some subgenres in fantasy, which are quite all-in on KU, but there are others which are pretty much 50/50.

So, I guess I'd put it down to a couple of factors. As far as the individual author is concerned, as we know, KU pay rates are per page. So, if you tend to write longer, then, relatively speaking, KU is going to be a better bet for you. So, a good example there is LitRPG, which has really exploded in popularity over the last, what is it, four years, five years, I think.

I probably first heard the term about 2019, just before the lockdown. now, and then that, that was a genre, subgenre, that was always around before that, but it sort of got this name and suddenly exploded in popularity. lit RPG books, my colleagues who write in that genre, tend to run quite long.

And by quite long, I mean more than a hundred thousand words. They are often sort of in serials. So I think that has contributed to them being in KU quite a lot. On the other hand, there are a lot of shorter fantasy, and there are a lot of more traditional, sort of swords and sorcery fantasy books that are published by small publishers, not by the big five, big four, but they, in that situation, they are more often wide.

So another factor for authors to consider, I think in terms of KU versus wide, as well as their writing tempo, is also how much they want to spend time on marketing to different stores. There are great services now like Draft2Digital, which will make it very much easier for you to get your books onto multiple stores, but then of course.

Remember, there's the exclusivity agreement, so if you are wide, then you are prevented from having your books in KU for a three-month period. We also know, then, that quite a few authors have practiced putting books in KU for the first three-month period and then taking them out and going wide.

Matty: Yeah, I think that one of the areas that I as someone who is not in KU have benefited from being aware of the KU versus Y distinction is when I'm running book bub ads. And I know that I would go through, and I would find other authors who are successful in my genre, which is Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, and I would run book bub ads against them.

But one thing that I realized very quickly I had to check was whether they were in KU or not. Because I realized that running a BookBub ad, now I'm talking about ads, not feature deals, but running a BookBub ad against a KU author's audience when I myself am not in KU is probably targeting the wrong group because KU readers are looking for something different than people who are not KU readers.

And so I feel like, you know, if I had spent money on advertising to KU author followers, then I probably would have been not using my advertising dollars to the best effect because I'm advertising to people who aren't used to interacting with getting content in that way.

Nat: Yeah, that's true. I mean, I think also there, my instinct is that it is less a matter of the difference in terms of what people are looking for, and maybe a bit more the simple fact that they have already paid for KU. So for them to pay extra money for a book, it's much more difficult for them to justify.

So, you're absolutely right that targeting if you're not a known author to them, it's much less likely that they're going to take a

punt on your book rather than taking a punt on another book that's actually in KU already. It's interesting also, and I don't know if you heard this, but as a romance author, traditionally, like five years ago, it was very difficult to get a book bub if you were in KU.

There was a belief, true or otherwise, that you were much more likely to get one if your books were wide than in KU, and you could get them if you were in KU, but you had to be a very heavy hitter. Was that a belief in Mystery and Suspense as well? I think it's changed a bit now, and I've seen, you

Matty: Yeah, not that I've heard of. And I also think that it's important to point out to people who aren't familiar with BookBub that I think you're talking about feature deals, sort of two approaches to BookBub. One is to apply for a feature deal, which is quite challenging to get and expensive if you land it, and then ads, which anyone can run. But, it could well be. I just don't recall, hearing, you know, hearing chatter about that in my genre.

Nat: yeah, yeah. So, so talking about the Y versus KU distinction in the case of fantasy, what we can see, just looking at the data that I've got in front of me now, is that actually, for the top 200 books in all of fantasy. They're actually pretty much 50 50 wide versus KU. if you look at this sort of split across other genres, like say paranormal romance, or urban fantasy, then you'll find a much higher proportion of KU, books compared to wide, but across all of fantasy, it's actually pretty much 50 50.

At the moment. Now there's a couple of, in the case of fantasy, there's a couple of, reasons for that. And probably one of the, the most common ones, or the most obvious ones is that, there are quite a lot of TRA published fantasy books in the top 200. Those are the ones which tend to be more wide.

So we've got a situation where kind of 50% wide, 50% KU. The KU half is mostly indie. Mostly and the wide half is much more trad. So that another, another factor, I think, for listeners is if you are interested in being trad published now or in the future, then that might affect your decisions about whether you're IN KU or wide.

Of course, Your commitment to, enrollment in KU is only a 90-day commitment, so there are always options to change things later on, and I think, we, and we'll see this when we get to the covers. I think in the past, there was a much bigger, distinction between KU covers and wide covers. It was generally believed that you sort of had to recover your books if you were going to go wide, otherwise they wouldn't sell.

I think that's much less the case now than it has been in the past. Yes,

Matty: to that conversation.

Series versus Standalone

Matty: Another piece of data that you recommend people look at is series versus standalone. And this is usually not something that people are, like, some people who are really organized are actually making this as a decision, but I think many authors, if they're like me, finish their book and then realize it's one or the other. So can you talk a little bit about when people are looking at data and using fantasy as an example, and they're looking at the series versus standalone, what are you recommending people look at there?

Nat: Yeah, sure. Well, another kind of obvious thing is that if you are in mind to write a series or you're continuing a series, then KU in some ways is a bit more appealing because if people like your work, it's very easy for them to binge and to just keep reading the next book in the series and the next book and the next book. And, as a lot of listeners will know, often, whether you're in KU or not, people in the past have priced the first book in their series quite low, so 99 cents or $2.99, in order to encourage people to take a gamble on it. And then, when you get them interested in your writing style and you get them invested in your characters, then you can carry on, you know?

However, of course, planning out a series is a lot of work, and it's quite reasonable, I think, to start, I've certainly done this, to start something without really knowing whether the world has got enough in it for you to write a compelling series, you know? I think not every long series, or even series of just a couple of books, starts out that way.

So, I think, and also, in fact, again, when we get to covers, we'll see that if you have a series that places different constraints on your cover design, because as we know, we want the covers to be linked in one way or another, and when we look at a cover montage, you can really see examples of things where there's a bunch of books in a series, and you want it to be very clear to the reader that that's what's going on.

Pricing Considerations

Matty: Oh, the pricing conversation is interesting because we're recording this in the middle of 2024. At the end of 2023, I made a change to my pricing because everything was getting more expensive. For a long time, my pricing model was that for my nonfiction books, my first in series book was $2.99 and then the subsequent books were $4.99. And I started feeling like not only is it nice to get more money for each book, but I felt as if the pricing defines the books that you want to be compared with. Now many of the traditionally published ebooks are $14. There are reasons that indie authors are not doing that because we get penalized for pricing a book over $9.99, but I put up all my first in series ebooks to $6.99, and then I increased my first in series to $3.99, which I still feel as if it's a price that I as a reader am willing to take a chance on, and I think that's kind of a benefit that indies have.

I mean, it's unfortunate that we're, in a sense, being forced to do this because of the Amazon rule that if a book is priced over $9.99, then you get a lower royalty rate, but it also makes it easier for readers to say, "Oh, here's somebody that looks interesting, but I don't know them, but I want to check it out."

And having that lower cost of entry to the series, I think, is really smart.

Nat: Yeah, that's true. I think also in your case, Matty, and I know I've said this a lot in the past, your covers and your branding are very classy, so it looks like it's done by a trad house, it looks like books that should be on the shelf next to some of the famous trad mystery authors, and that's a specific branding decision, and I think it's great. Look, fantastic, I've always been a big fan of your covers, but that's one decision and there are other decisions, but I think for where you are at and for the price point that you're talking about, particularly since, as you've said and we'll see, prices across most all genres have been steadily marching upwards over the past four years or so, which is great news because of that, I think you're absolutely right that your books can stand a higher price point.

Matty: Yeah. I'm sort of fascinated with this topic lately of what. What do you want? What books do you want to show up next to yours? And when I think about the books that I would love to have my books show up next to, many of them are traditionally published, and so you're sending a message one way or the other to your audience based on the kinds of information that you're putting on, you know, the quality of your cover, but the style of your cover, and it's all messages that you're sending to your potential reader.

Nat: Yes, exactly. It's a question of a sort of visual language and the pricing and the language in your blurb and so on and so forth. So, I'd never say to any author that they have to do exactly the same things that their comp authors or comp titles do, but I would always say that you need to be aware of them because if you want to be seen next to those books and also boughts and also reads and those kinds of things and in ads, then you need to be aware of what they're doing.

And to some degree, you need to align with it. I guess that's the point I'd say you've got to align with what those, in your case, those trade authors are doing. You don't have to copy it, but you've got to not kind of go against it, as it were.

Cover Design

Matty: Well, we've been referring to cover design and I'm going to seize the opportunity to go slightly off the fantasy topic because I'm very interested in this currently. For my Lizzie Ballard thrillers, I had covers that I love. Like, when I hold one of those print books in my hand, it gives me good goosebumps because I think they're lovely covers. But what I realized was that, first of all, the subtleties that make the print covers lovely are kind of lost in the tiny thumbnails online. And then the other thing I realized is that in some ways they were almost more fantasy-esque than thriller-esque. And I'm just having them redone, and I'm starting to be a real believer in the idea that you really need to revisit your covers maybe every five years because I always recommend that people subscribe to an email newsletter like BookBub or BargainBooksy, FreeBooksy, one of those, eReader News Today, Fussy Librarian, there are many of them out there. Subscribe as a reader to your own genre, because oftentimes the trends in the cover are so starkly evident when you look at the list, and I would pull up my daily BookBub newsletter for mystery, thriller, suspense. And I was like, I don't know, my book cover isn't looking like it fits in with these books now.

And you have these trends that come and go, like for a long time with a thriller, it was the woman in the yellow jacket running away. I don't know why yellow jacket was so popular. But I finally just thought, you know, I have to stop being sort of emotionally tied to the beautiful covers that I love and say, "You know, that was fine, but it's not what I need to be doing in 2024."

Can you talk more generally about advice you would give to people on that front?

Nat: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I mean, first I always loved those covers and I think that was maybe one of the first things I said to you when we first started talking some years ago was, wow, those are really classic covers. But yes, you're absolutely right. The thing is, new books come out all the time. And, what that means is those books, the readers read them, and those books will change readers' expectations of what is being communicated, the visual language. of particular elements or colors or devices on the page that changes over time because of course it does and so what your book, what anyone's cover is communicating in 2018 or 2019 is not what it is going to be communicating to readers in 2024.

Those things don't change overnight. And, you know, I'd never say that you have to constantly be changing your covers because I think sometimes that could be confusing as well as expensive and a lot of work. But the timeframe that you're talking about, Matty, I think is absolutely right. and you're very right that subscribing to reader-focused newsletters is a great way to see a low effort way to see what other people are doing because you can, as you say, imagine your book next to them and say, well, does it fit in?

And you, like, if you will see, I suspect, probably, you were seeing books that, if you read the blurb or the ad, they sounded like your books, they sounded like a potential comp, but the cover was completely different. So you're sort of thinking, well, hang on, this looks like my kind of book, it looks like my reader's kind of book, more to the point, but my cover is saying is speaking a really different language to this book, which is kind of coming out now.

And again, you don't have to change absolutely everything, but it pays to be aware of that. And some of the best redesigns, I think, that I've seen have been quite subtle ones, where they are updating things, but they're keeping what was good about the original cover.

You know, you can see this a lot in fantasy and in some other speculative fiction genres with the trend towards what are called discrete covers. I think maybe we've talked about this a bit in the past, that there are now a lot more covers that have objects or sort of symbolic representations of them of things on them a bit like that so the classic example I think from a long time ago was the Harry Potter books that the first editions had illustrated covers and then there were some more ostensibly more adult, images of, of symbols and things.

And you can see the difference. And they convey, they convey different things in a way that's happened for a lot of people in fantasy now. And in fact, if when we look at a montage of all of fantasy books, we can see a lot more of those discrete object style covers. that, that they often include things about the, the nature of the story.

And they also just going back to the issue of, series. a discrete or object style cover often makes it quite easier for you to have a common through line in terms of the same, having similar elements or complementary elements on a particular series. So if you've got a series of objects or whatever.

Matty: Yeah, the Harry Potter one is interesting because my guess is that when they were first putting out the first book, and it was very much targeted at children, that they came up with that illustrated idea, and then they had to kind of carry it through, but then I think when they realized what appeal that had to adult readers.

They wanted to readjust it a little bit to make it less like, not cartoonish, but more serious. I'm not coming up with exactly the

Nat: something, something, yeah, absolutely something that somebody in their sort of 40s would be more likely to go into a bookstore and pick up. yeah, you're absolutely right. But I think also, if we look at the history of all of the covers of a sort of a very famous book or book series, we can see these changes as well.

So, one reason to change covers, of course, is to appeal to a different market segment. But another one is the thing that you were saying about your books that, even if you're trying to appeal to the same people that you were five years ago, their expectations have changed because of all of the other books coming out.

And now, just looking at the cover montage, now we can see that, fey or books about, fey or elves will often have these kind of symbolic discrete covers, whereas in fantasy lit RPG books will often have more cartoon, illustrated type covers, actually more similar to the old Harry Potter books in some ways.

Matty: And we're going to be talking eventually about an easy way people can see all this information, but a good available resource for people would just be to go to your favorite online retailer, go to your genre, look at the top, however many books, top 100 books or whatever, and try to picture your book cover among those and see if it makes sense to you, visual sense to you or not.

Nat: Yeah, absolutely. It's okay with you, Matty, in the show notes, we'll list a couple of free tools, which I've got, which will make it very easy for you to just download that kind of information. So to download a cover montage and the simplest things, you know, if you're very short on time, then the things that I would recommend would be one, as Matty says, sign up to relevant newsletters in your genre. Scan them, because that's what your readers are seeing, and the other one is go to the relevant top 100s in your genre, download the cover montage, and just look at that. That's a very short job every week, and once you do it for a month, you'll start seeing a whole lot of little changes, and those changes can be quite profound.

Matty: Maybe a good news for indie authors is that something I've noticed in my BookBub emails is that I'll see the same authors come up, over the course of a month, over the course of a couple of months, the same authors pop into those. And the covers from book to book are very similar, the overall design is very similar. In a sense, almost identical, but maybe the colors are slightly different. I'm following this approach with the updated covers for the Lizzie Ballard books, but rather than a cover designer having to start from scratch each time they do a new book in a series, it seems as if readers are accepting of and maybe even looking for more consistency. So you make a few tweaks from cover to cover, but the designer isn't having to start from scratch each time, which I think could be a more efficient and more cost-effective way of indie authors getting covers in, you know, if what I'm saying is true.

Nat: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And in some situations where you have serials, that is, and by serial I mean a story which follows essentially the same group of characters over perhaps three or four or even more books, and there is sort of an overall story arc and the focus is on that, which we do, we see in a number of situations. So, at the moment, short romance, just to take a quick look. Diversion, Short Romance, has a few different segments in it. Some of it is the sort of fairly steamy instant attraction thing, but there's also, and this is from fairly recent, quite a lot of serials which have very, very similar covers. And the reason I bring this up, Matty, is to pick up on your point about the similarity of covers. in that situation, the covers are so similar that I actually thought they were all the same cover, from a distance, you know, in a montage or in the sort of thumbnail size thing you get in an ad, they all look like the same book, and it's not until you, and it seems to work, but, it's not until you actually look at the thing, that it will sort of say, you Book five or book four or something like that. So the focus there, if you're a serial writer, is much more on reinforcing the brand of the serial as a whole. And of course, a lot of them are in KU. So it's easy for people to pick up The next one and the next one and to keep reading, you know, to reinforce the brand of the serial as a whole, rather than to differentiate the books in the serial, you know, because if people come to the book and they think, Oh, hang on, this is book five, and I haven't read book three yet, they're just going to go back to book three, they're much less likely to kind of give up. So different, I think the take-home message that I'm trying to get to there, Matty, is that, your choices, listeners' choices about, cover design, whether it's for stand-alones or series, are affected not only by your comps, but also by the reading habits of people in your genre. whether they prefer to read, sort of, long books, or whether they prefer to read IN KU, or wide, or whatever.

Matty: Yeah, I think another good takeaway for people would be, whatever tool they're using, whether that would be, email, like BookBub emails or other tools, that when you see a cover from an author that you would consider a comp author that you really like, just copy that off into a little, you know, a little, book. electronic bulletin board because, it's, it can be very informative. That's how I ended up landing on the redesign that I wanted because I started seeing this emerging, trend in thriller type covers. I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. And so I, you know, collected half a dozen that I really liked, and I was able to send that to my cover designer and say, I

Collect Best Practices in Your Genre

Nat: Yeah, well, that's good. I mean, one per five years, that's probably okay. Yeah, absolutely. So keep a, another great tip, I think, for listeners is to keep a crib file, like a file of all the things that you like, which are relevant to you in terms of your comps, terms of phrase, advertising taglines, loglines for books, and also covers, of course. Sign up to one of those free services like Notion or Airtable, and you will quickly, if you do that sort of once a week, end up with a whole lot of stuff that you can use to start making decisions. Because I think in the past when I've tried to recover things or rewrite my blurbs, I've started from a blank slate, and that was a long way up the hill, if you know what I mean, whereas if you've got a bunch of other stuff that people are doing and you think, "oh, that's cool," or "wow, I wish I'd come up with that," that makes it that much easier for you to get into the groove of what it is you're actually trying to do.

Study Genre Conventions for Blurbs

Nat: When you're rewriting blurbs, because we, I know we haven't talked about blurbs very much this time, Andy, but again, that's a thing. Blurbs drift. They change just the same way covers do and for exactly the same reasons. So they are something that's worth revisiting periodically to see what the other blurbs in your neighborhood are saying to readers, you know, and they're also arguably cheaper and easier to work on than covers.

Matty: One of the things that I've seen that's very interesting is when, like, ChatGPT started to be all the rage. And I would do things like I would take my existing blurb and put it into ChatGPT, and I would say, like, rewrite this as in the style of a best-selling thriller or mystery or suspense novel. And, you know, a lot of times the information I got back was quite good. But I realized that there's like an identifiable ChatGPT style. And so it's just an argument for using these things as a tool, not for the final product, because what I did find is that I would think like, "oh, that's a word, like, it's using a word that I hadn't thought of." I'm going to incorporate that word. But I think as people get more sophisticated about it, I think it's a good look at the kinds of information that AI platforms like ChatGPT put out, then they're going to read something and it's going to be clearer that, where it's coming from, because there would be, like, there were very identifiable ways that it would close out the blurb. And, and it sounded okay to me the first time, but after I read three or four, I was like, "yeah, no."

Nat: In stats, it's called regression to the mean, Matty. And a lot of those LLM text generation things, it's very much regression to the mean where, it looks good the first time and looks pretty good the second time and then you do it a few times and you start to look in the store and you realize how many other blurbs are like that and you're like, "wait a minute, you're not being as creative as you kind of implied you were, buddy." So yes, absolutely a great way to help if you're creatively blocked, but generally much better if you use it as a starting point rather than as an ending point.

Soliciting Input - Ask People to Rank a Selection

Nat: The other tip that I have, if you don't mind me mentioning, Matty, which I know I've mentioned before, is when I get people to evaluate stuff, I never send one blurb and say, do you like it? Or tell me what's wrong. I always send them three. Not two, but three. And I say, rank these in the order that you prefer. And this has a bunch, yeah, this has a bunch. Now, maybe one of them is your real one and two of them are kind of crappy ones that you just got ChatGPT to do. Doesn't matter. Don't tell anyone that. Just present them neutrally, but the reason I do this is because people often find it much easier to rank things in order of their preference than to say specifically that they do or don't like something because in a way, saying whether they do or don't like something is a little bit of an emotive decision, you know, and if you don't like something, then it's sort of incumbent upon you to articulate why, a lot of people don't like giving feedback that is along the lines of, I don't really like this, but I've got no idea why. And yet, that's actually a valid feeling, particularly if it's something that a reader might have. Whereas, if you give your blurbs to five people, and they all rank a particular blurb bottom of three, probably don't use that one. Like, whatever else is going on, that's probably not the blurb you want to use, you know, if there's one, what I find usually is that there is one that everyone dislikes, and sometimes it's the one that I thought was good, and rarely there is one that everyone thinks is the best, and in that situation you go with your own intuition and your experience and stuff, but yeah. I hope that helps.

Consider the "Key Topics" of Your Genre

Matty: Yeah, that's great advice. When we were talking about, we haven't hit, I haven't given you a chance to talk about fantasy books specifically, very, but I think that the generic stuff is great because then this, everybody can apply it to their own. Circumstances, but this is one where we might want to, we might end up diving into fantasy as an example a little bit, but you had said key topics is another piece of data people should be looking at.

Nat: Yeah. Absolutely. So one of the things that I've spent a lot of time thinking about is trying to understand what's in a book that is resonating with readers, we use words like tropes, and archetypes, and settings, and themes, and so forth, and those are all, they're all perfectly valid words, and I use them a lot, but for me, they're all trying to answer the same question, which is, what's in this book? What am I going to get when I read it? And our blurbs, of course, are one of the main things, as well as the title and the cover. Those are the instruments by which we signal to readers what you're going to get, what's the emotional experience you're going to get when you, you pick up a book. Readers have their own language about doing this, and it's not always the same one that we do. And it's very genre specific. I think that's maybe a bit of a statement of the obvious, but one of the things that I try to do when I'm looking at a genre is to say, what does this specific word mean in this genre? So to give you an example, I'm looking at the fantasy, a list of sort of key topics in the top 200 fantasy books at the moment. And I'm seeing some, like, there's some kind of obvious ones like supernatural and dragons and fey and elves and yeah, it's not surprising that those, but I'm also seeing an interesting one, which is military. And the reason that I, I've sort of collected these things together is to get a general sense of what's going on. So in this case, in the fantasy books, if a book has any mention of military units, So, I don't just use general words or military words, so generals and corporals and captains or battalions or, you know, strategy, those kinds of things. I kind of group them all into one topic. So what I'm trying to do is to get a general sense of what's going on. in the case, this was coming, came to me this morning, the use of those military words in a fantasy blurb, it means something different to the way it might mean something in, say, a mystery blurb. So, if you see military words in a fantasy blurb, I think that's more likely to imply that there is

Assessing Your Genre Assignment

Matty: But I think the other thing that's always important to point out is you may have picked the wrong genre. I think that writers are notoriously bad at understanding their own genre because they're writing from their heart. Many writers are writing, "Oh, I want to write a military fantasy book," but some are just writing a story, and then they're stepping back and saying, "What is this?" And so if you're stepping back and looking and you're seeing a disconnect, maybe it's not a matter of changing what you're doing to match what you thought were the comps. Maybe it's a lesson that your comps are different than you thought. And if your blurb or your tropes or your cover is looking more like something else, maybe you just need to recategorize the genre that you've put your book in.

Nat: Yeah, totally. The way that I would put it is that at the moment it might be that the current conventions and reader expectations of that genre are not a fit for the story that you're telling. And it might be that other conventions and other expectations in another genre, at the moment, are better because we know that genres are constantly on the move, and reader expectations are constantly on the move. And so it doesn't mean that your book is doomed. It doesn't mean that it's never going to find a readership. It just means that the expectations of what people, what's resonating with people right now in that area, aren't a fit for what you're doing. So, there are a lot of other areas, and sometimes it can take a bit of work to go and find those other areas, you know?

The Neighborhood of Your Books

Nat: Maybe this is where I can talk about this concept that I've been thinking of to do with a neighborhood—that is, the neighborhood of your books is not just your genre or your subgenre, and it's not just your comps. For me, it's actually the things that make your comps and your subgenre what they are. It is the language that people around you, your authors around you, use in their blurbs. It's the visual elements that they use on covers to signify particular things. So, we'll be able to see that a visual element in one genre signifies one thing. Same visual element, different genre. Different signification.

It might also, your neighborhood, as an author, might also include some of the other products that your readers are interested in. So for instance, if you have a fantasy reader, they are much more likely to be interested in fantasy TV shows, so your neighborhood also in that case includes fantasy TV shows. It might also include podcasts or videocasts about fantasy. Now, I'm not saying all of this to sort of overwhelm listeners and to say, "Hey, you've got to spend all your time keeping up with all of this other media rather than writing," but rather to think of, to encourage people to think of their neighborhood as being kind of a broad thing, which includes the books that people are reading, but it also includes the language that they're using and what emotions are being triggered when they read books, for instance. And my argument, the reason why I'm talking about this, is because I think the important business decisions are actually made in that microenvironment. They're actually made in your neighborhood, much more than about the generally what's happening in your genre, so in mystery or in fantasy, there will be some big trends, but, my argument is actually it's the little trends, the things that are happening close to you, which are the ones that really affect the day-to-day business decisions you make as an author, like your covers, your example before, Matty, of how your reader expectations for books like yours have changed in terms of covers. That's a great example because if you were just looking at all mystery books, that might not be so obvious, you know?

Using Categories to Educate the Retail Platform

Matty: So, we've been talking, I think that the conversation about neighborhood is hopefully a good entree to the last topic I wanted to discuss, which is categories. So, I can imagine that neighborhood and categories have a connection, but how direct is the connection between those two concepts?

Nat: Yeah, well, I mean, a lot is discussed about categories on the Kindle store, and on the wide stores as well, although generally the wide stores don't have the same level of detail, I think, in terms of how many categories they have. Whether that's a bad thing or not, I'm not sure, but sometimes I think it's not a bad thing at all. But, one thing's for sure, there are a heck of a lot of categories on the Amazon store, and they are, the way I see them, is actually they're a way of teaching Amazon what books your books are like. They are the most direct way of teaching Amazon about your comps, and I think that's why they are important.

I think they're less important in the sense of an objective description of what's in your book. I think what matters is when you're looking at categories, where are the books that you want to be next to? Those are the categories that you should be in, even if the label on top of the category isn't quite how you'd describe your book. I would urge listeners to take a pragmatic approach and say, "Okay, well, this category, when I look at the top 100, or I follow it for a bit, I see that this category includes a lot of my comps and the language, the visual language and the language of blurbs in this category, is a fit for what I'm doing." So that's the category for me, even if the name of the category isn't what you personally see as being your book, you know, because ultimately all of that metadata is a way of teaching Amazon who to show your book to with the greatest chance that they're going to like it. When we look at a lot of these categories, a lot of them are actually pretty arbitrary.

Just looking at fantasy, obviously, most books in the top 200 in fantasy, have at least one category in fantasy, but there are also a fair chunk, so what, 25 percent of them have a romance category as well. A bit more than 25 percent are in one of the literature and fiction categories, so mythology and folk tales and so on and so forth. Now, is that where you want to be? Well, that depends, but it's always worth looking at the other categories that are kind of around yours, and you know, listeners I'm sure know that when you go to a book on the Amazon store, you can scroll down, and when you go about halfway down the page, you'll see the three top-ranked categories for a book. Again, I would put those in your crib file that we talked about a little bit earlier and make a note of those categories and go and investigate them when you can, because you might find that there are some other categories, as well as the obvious ones, which are a good fit for your book.

Matty: That's great. Especially now because I think that Amazon's trying to get its hands around this idea. You had suggested that maybe more categories isn't necessarily a good thing. And some of the changes that they're making, recently, I think, suggest that they also agree that more categories are not necessarily a good thing. And I think it's an incentive for people to think about it more carefully than maybe they would have in the past.

Nat: Yeah, well, I think maybe what's happened is that there was a huge explosion of them when ebook reading took off. And so they were added a lot. I don't know, Matty, if you've ever looked at all of the categories under mystery thriller and suspense, like the thriller ones and stuff. Boy, there are a lot of them. And boy, I don't know what the difference is. And I mean, you could sort of invent one, but then you go and look, and in actual fact, in the top 100 or 200, there's a lot of overlap. So what that's telling me is I don't think readers really know either, but it doesn't change the fact that at the moment, the important thing to do is go and find the ones where your comps are most likely represented and find the ones that are within your neighborhood and stick with them. It may be that there will be a reduction in categories in the future, because I don't think that readers really browse by category. I think this is, you know, pure speculation, but I think that most buying decisions are made by books being shown to readers, and the things that we talked about before, the visual language of the cover, the language of the blurb, those are the things

that make a reader give a buying decision. I don't believe that many readers come to new books and new authors by browsing categories. So they're still important, but they're important indirectly rather than directly, because they can teach Amazon who our books should be shown to, so they then make the buying decision.

Matty: And I like that idea of looking at it both ways. Go to the category and see what other books are there, but then also look at the books that you consider to be comps and go backwards and see what categories they're putting themselves in. So we've talked about lots of great information, some of which would be quite labor-intensive to collect manually. So I want to give you an opportunity to talk about a less manual way that people can get the information that we've been talking about.

Nat's resources, including the Kindletrends newsletter

Nat: Thank you, Matty. So, there are a few things. First, I hope we can fit all of this in the show notes. I have a bunch of free tools for the author community that make collecting information quite easy. I've got a Chrome browser extension where you can download cover montages, and data about the Top 100, and also about your also boughts.

We didn't get time to talk very much about also boughts, but they are important when they're around because they come and go. They are a really important part of understanding what's going on in your neighborhood because they are what readers are prepared to pay money for. They don't have to be your also boughts; they might be the also boughts of your comps or also boughts of an author to whom you aspire to be like. Go and look at those when you can find them because, to me, they are the most concrete aspect of reader behavior because it involves putting down some money, and that's what really counts. So, I have a tool that allows you to download all of the also boughts from a particular book very quickly and easily.

What I also do, though, to help people keep up with what's going on in their neighborhood, is make an author newsletter called "Kindle Trends," and this is a subscription thing. I'll give you a discount code just at the end, but the idea is that you sign up, and every week or every month, I send to your inbox a quick description of what's going on in your genre of interest or genres of interest. There are 14 different ones, and you get links to everything that's trending on the Kindle store and suggestions about books to look at because they've just come out and they're shooting up the charts, and so forth. So, what I'm trying to do is to take a lot of the donkey work of research out and make it so the author can spend all the time doing the stuff that only you can do, which is reading and understanding how it fits with you.

Matty: Yeah, I'm a subscriber of Kindletrends and, just as one example, one way that I've used it recently is when I was rethinking my pricing. It was great to be able to go into the Kindletrends newsletter and see the breakdown, in the top 100, of how many books were priced at each price level. Of course, I could have come up with that eventually myself, but it is super nice just to open a newsletter and have it right there for you.

Nat: Yeah. So, my 30-second description is it is like the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times for working fiction authors. If you've got 30 seconds, you can just read the front bit, read the headlines. If you want to dig into a specific thing that's going on in your genre, then it's all laid out for you there as well. I've got a bunch of videos showing you how to do things, and some examples of how to do research in your genre, and to keep up to date. What's going on using Kindletrends as a base and all of the data there. I want to take a moment to mention this: All of the data is available to you. So, if you want to go and do your own thing, if you really like using Excel, people like that do exist. If you really like doing that kind of thing, then, hey, look, then I'm very much an open data advocate. So, I try to make things straightforward for authors. But also, if you want to know why something is the way it is, or why I'm recommending things, there are no black boxes. It's all laid out there for you, and you can go through the reasoning yourself and come to a different conclusion if you want. That's one of the things I'm really trying to advocate now, is the idea that we can have kind of roundtable discussions, in a genre community about what's going on. And we might agree or we might disagree about what's going to happen, but we've all got a common evidence base of the information that I've gathered, and I think that's really important, and it's a lot of fun too.

Nat's offer to followers of The Indy Author

Matty: That's so great. Well, Nat, thank you so much. It's always lovely to chat with you and let people know where they can go to find out more about you and Kindletrends and the discount code online.

Nat: Thanks for reminding me about it. So, I am at kindletrends.com, and that's where you'll find all the free resources, we'll put some of the links in the show notes, for listeners of The Indy Author Podcast. I have a special deal, which is if you use the code INDYAUTHOR, then you will get a 33 percent discount. So normally, Kindletrends is $15 a month flat, never changes. There's no upselling, no premium tiers. There will never be any of those kinds of things. That's my commitment. It's one price. That's it. But if you are a listener of The Indy Author Podcast, then you can put in the coupon INDYAUTHOR and get it for $10 a month forever.

Matty: Thank you so much.

Nat: All right. Thanks very much, Matty. It's been a lot of fun.

Matty Dalrymple 6/18/24 Matty Dalrymple 6/18/24

Episode 243 - Mistakes Writers Make about Forensic Psychology with Katherine Ramsland

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Katherine Ramsland discusses MISTAKES WRITERS MAKE ABOUT FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, including these commons mistakes and how to avoid them: They are used as profilers because detectives can’t do this work; they visit crime scenes to advise on catching a killer; they profile a person; they interrogate suspects; they undertake hypnosis or therapy in the courtroom; they pronounce defendants to be sane or insane; and they can accurately predict long-range future violent behavior without standardized tools.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland teaches forensic psychology and behavioral criminology in the graduate program at DeSales University, where she is Professor Emerita. She has appeared as an expert on more than 200 crime documentaries and was an executive producer on "Murder House Flip" and A&E’s "Confession of a Serial killer: BTK." The author of 72 books, including "The Serial Killer’s Apprentice" and "How to Catch a Killer," she pens a regular blog for Psychology Today. She has also written a crime fiction series based on a female forensic psychologist, Annie Hunter, who consults on death investigations.

Episode Links

www.katherineramsland.net
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/202405/10-mistakes-fiction-writers-make-about-forensic-psychology

Summary

In this episode of "The Indy Author Podcast," host Matty Dalrymple interviews Dr. Katherine Ramsland, a prominent forensic psychologist. Ramsland, who teaches at DeSales University, is an accomplished author with 72 books to her credit, including "The Serial Killer's Apprentice" and "How to Catch a Killer." Her extensive experience as an expert on over 200 crime documentaries and her role on shows like "Murder House Flip" and "Confession of a Serial Killer: BTK" makes her a highly respected figure in the field.

Introduction to Forensic Psychology:
Ramsland explains that forensic psychology lies at the intersection of psychology and the legal system. Forensic psychologists typically analyze competency for courtroom cases, assess mental states at the time of offenses, and develop prison programs. They apply principles from social, clinical, and cognitive psychology to the legal system. Unlike criminologists who focus on trend analysis and crime prevention from a sociological perspective, forensic psychologists deal with individual behaviors and mental states related to crimes.

Common Misconceptions in Forensic Psychology:
Ramsland identifies several common mistakes that writers make when depicting forensic psychologists in fiction.

1. Profiling Misconception:
   Contrary to popular belief, forensic psychologists are not primarily profilers. Profiling involves analyzing crime scene behaviors to understand the type of person who might commit a crime, rather than displacing detectives in investigations. Ramsland highlights that detectives, with their extensive training and experience, do not necessarily rely on profilers, and the portrayal of forensic psychologists as superior to detectives in profiling is both inaccurate and insulting.

2. Crime Scene Involvement:
   Forensic psychologists typically do not visit crime scenes to catch killers. Their role is more consultative, often analyzing crime scene photos rather than being physically present at the scenes. Ramsland emphasizes the unrealistic nature of depictions where forensic psychologists are shown tramping through crime scenes or exhuming bodies.

3. Profiling Individuals:
   The notion of profiling individuals, as popularized by shows like "Criminal Minds," is misleading. Instead, forensic psychologists analyze behavioral clues from crime scenes to understand the type of person who could commit the crime. This approach focuses on crime scene analysis rather than reading or profiling individuals.

4. Interrogating Suspects:
   Forensic psychologists do not conduct suspect interrogations. Their role may involve consulting on behavioral strategies but not directly engaging in interrogation processes. Misrepresentations include the idea that psychologists have special insights into detecting deception, which is not supported by research.

5. Courtroom Therapy and Hypnosis:
   Depictions of forensic psychologists conducting therapy or hypnosis in courtrooms are highly inaccurate. Ramsland explains that their courtroom role is either to analyze and provide expert opinions or to clarify complex psychological concepts to the jury or judge. Hypnosis, once a common investigative tool, is now largely discredited due to its unreliability in producing accurate memories.

6. Sane or Insane Pronouncements:
   Forensic psychologists do not have the authority to declare a defendant sane or insane. Insanity is a legal term, and the decision is made by the trier of fact (judge or jury), not by mental health experts. Psychologists can provide insights into a defendant's state of mind but do not make legal determinations.

7. Predicting Future Violence:
   The ability of forensic psychologists to predict long-term violent behavior is limited and relies on standardized tools assessing various risk factors. Predictive accuracy diminishes with time, and changes in a person’s life circumstances can invalidate earlier predictions. Ramsland stresses the importance of adhering to best practice standards to avoid liability for future violent acts committed by released individuals.

Impact of Social Media on Forensic Psychology:
Ramsland discusses how social media has become a vital tool in forensic psychology, providing insights into individuals' behaviors and potential threats. Social media activity can be crucial in assessing imminent threats and preventing violent acts.

Conclusion:
The episode includes Ramsland sharing insights into her crime fiction series featuring Annie Hunter, a forensic psychologist. By integrating real-life forensic techniques and maintaining accuracy, Ramsland enhances the credibility and intrigue of her stories. The discussion provides valuable guidance for writers aiming to create authentic and engaging crime fiction, while also highlighting the complexities and ethical considerations inherent in forensic psychology.

Transcript

Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Katherine Ramsland. Hey, Katherine, how are you doing?

Katherine: I'm doing well, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Meet Katherine Ramsland

Matty: I am pleased to have you here and to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you. Dr. Katherine Ramsland teaches forensic psychology and behavioral criminology in the graduate program at DeSales University, where she is Professor Emerita.

She's appeared as an expert on more than 200 crime documentaries and was an executive producer on "Murder House Flip" and A&E's "Confession of a Serial Killer: BTK." The author of 72 books, including "The Serial Killer's Apprentice" and "How to Catch a Killer," she pens a regular blog for Psychology Today.

She's also written a crime fiction series based on a female forensic psychologist, Annie Hunter, who consults on death investigations. I invited Katherine on the podcast because I ran into her at the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop's I Scream for Mysteries event. As I had told her, I tried to go to one of her talks at a conference one year, and it was full. It was beyond standing room only when I showed up, so I was not able to hear her. I'm fascinated by what she does, and we're going to be talking about mistakes writers make about forensic psychology.

What is Forensic Psychology?

Matty: It's probably useful to provide a little more context and just talk a little bit about what a forensic psychologist is and what their role is before we dive into some of the things about what their role is not.

Katherine: Okay. Forensic psychology is where the court and investigative systems interact with psychology, and most forensic psychologists are clinical psychologists. They are there to analyze for competency for the courtroom or mental state at the time of the offense, or prison programs. Quite often, they're there to apply concepts from social, clinical, and cognitive psychology to the court system.

Criminologists, who are often confused with forensic psychologists, approach crime through a sociological frame. They're looking at trend analysis, trying to look at the factors that elicit crimes, cause crimes, and trying to contain or prevent crimes. Criminalists are people working with the physical evidence, and criminal psychologists, a subset of forensic psychology, study things like motive and offender behavior pre-crime, post-crime, and things like that. Forensic psychology itself is a broad, sweeping subject area with many different aspects to it.
Mistake #1: "Forensic psychologists are used as profilers because detectives can’t do this work."

Matty: So we're going to dive right in with the first one, which is they're used as profilers because detectives can't do this work.

Katherine: So, I want to put some context in this. When I was doing an MFA fairly recently, as one of my graduate degrees, I read a lot of crime fiction, specifically with female protagonists, British and American. Because there's a lot of forensic psychology that comes into these novels, I was very surprised to find out so many people thought that's about all they do is profiling.

And that really limits the range of things that a forensic psychologist can actually talk about or consult on. There was also this idea that they were better at it than detectives, and some of the crime shows do this as well, the fiction shows. The detectives have lots of experience, they often get training, and often they don't even think the idea of profiling is very helpful, because they're looking at investigative things that aren't really about personality issues and motivation. So, the idea that a forensic psychologist can come in as a profiler and in some way displace the detective is, first of all, insulting, and secondly, it just doesn't work that way. It just doesn't work that way.

Now, in England, they operate as, I think it's called behavioral investigative analysts. And they are consultants, but again, they don't displace detectives in any way.

Matty: Well, it is nice to hear that if someone's writing a book or a series with a detective protagonist, they don't have to shy away from this. Normally when we hear from experts, they say, you know, you really shouldn't be doing this, but here's a case where you're saying, here's an opportunity that people aren't really taking advantage of, because a detective can have a wider scope of responsibility than maybe people think.

Katherine: Yeah, and forensic psychologists have a much greater range of skills and abilities than they're given credit for in some of the crime fiction, in a lot of the crime fiction, most of it.

Mistake #2: "They visit crime scenes to advise on catching a killer."

Matty: I have the feeling we're going to be hitting what some of those are in our conversation, but another mistake that you would call out that writers make is they visit crime scenes to advise on catching a killer. Talk about that a little bit.

Katherine: So, they're not there to catch a killer, that's the work of investigators. They are there, and then they don't visit the crime scenes. They may look at crime scene photos. They might visit at some point, but they're not on the scene. We've seen in movies where they'll get into the grave. That's, that was the one I thought was just crazy. They'll go, they'll just tramp right in through, go right to the body. These are not things that they do. They will consult. They often will never even look at crime scene photos. That's not necessarily what they're there to do. And so that's not really the point for them. They're not there to help catch a killer.

Matty: I'm going to be curious as we work through these Mistakes Writers Make lists that, since you yourself are writing fiction with a forensic psychologist, how did you accommodate the needs of entertaining fiction along with the reality that you're aware of in how these things actually work?

Katherine: Well, that is why my forensic psychologist, Annie Hunter, operates in a PI agency. So she has a team, and that cuts through a lot of the... so she has a PI who goes to do the research. She has a data analyst. She has a range of consultants, as I have, doing the kind of work I do. She's a suicidologist, as I also am. I consult with coroners and medical examiners. I have trained police officers. So I give her the same things that I have as access to other professionals who come in and help cut through some of the timing aspects. I try to keep it pretty accurate. I don't have the same problems with having to wait on crime labs, you know, because we're doing psychology here. So if she's consulting, or sometimes she'll take on a case just because it's of interest to her, or she has something, you know, like in the second novel, she lost a childhood friend to a guy who abducted her right in front of her, and it was never found. So that's her own case. That's her own personal agenda. She uses her team for that, and she's not held back by timing issues.

So there are things that you can do with forensic psychology, but you have to bring in these adjunct people who can do things. Like, I have a forensic meteorologist who assists with reading the geology and the weather factors, so Annie doesn't have to do that. But the great thing about having a team is they can go do the research and report back, so you don't have a lot of painstaking, "I did this, I did this, I did this," and it is told from a first-person perspective because she is a lot like me. But when you use these adjunct experts, much of that work is taken care of so you can attend to the suspense and the plot.

Matty: That seems like another good opportunity for people, not something to hold them back, but something to take advantage of. Because if you do have this team of people, then it takes care of some of these situations where you have a solo practitioner, and they're doing these things, and sometimes they're these very labored ways that, like, it's the point of view character they're trying to... what they're learning with the reader. But if you have a team of people like you're describing, then it's very natural, it's just a natural part of their interaction that they're describing what they found out or what their theories are, what investigation they've done. And I think that feels more natural, but it's also fun for a reader to kind of eavesdrop on.

Katherine: It is, and you put it into conversations, you can introduce new characters, unusual characters. You know, what are you doing with this drone? How does this work? How can we use a cadaver dog with that? So, and these are all based on things that I've done. Some of the characters are based on people I know, so that actually helps with the sense of reality. But at the same time, I understand you need the suspense, you need the build-up and whatnot. So I build in that. That is not something most forensic psychologists face, but because she runs a PI agency and it's called the Nutcrackers because they take on hard nuts to crack. So she always has really twisty cases, but they're based on real cases. That really are twisty in bizarre ways, and that's the fun of it.

Matty: Well, I have to ask a question that was not on your Mistakes Writers Make list, which is how much do you feel like you have to change the facts of an actual case for the purposes of your fiction work?

Katherine: The cases I use are not well known, so that helps. And then I change names. I'll change the nature of certain relationships. Place, dates, I'll shift that, but I'll keep the gist of the case pretty much intact, and that doesn't violate anything. It doesn't violate privacy. It doesn't, you know, I'm not... all I'm doing is taking a really bizarre case, because they always are strange, and putting it in a different context. And creating characters that grow organically from that context that can present the case, and then Annie gets into it. This is part of my MFA work because I had already had a number of other master's degrees. My MFA supervisors were able to do this with me, but what I presented was narrative non-fiction, but inject my fiction characters into it. So I used the exercises in the MFA program to put my characters in motion in real cases that I knew about or that I'd been involved in. So I kind of had that going for me when I was doing that work, not knowing that I was going to then make this into a fiction series. It was really more of an exercise for me and now, you know, it grew into something, but it always was based on actual cases. And I would typically change dates, names, and locations.

Matty: And did you say that these were less well known, these were just cases that you came across in the process of your professional life?

Katherine: Mostly, I mean, there is one that got national attention, but I changed the names and I injected people into it that hadn't been part of it. But mostly I will try to find cases that aren't well known. That's the nice thing about being in the forensic world in a professional context is that I find and I hear about cases that the general public just never will have, they'll never hear about it. And even if they try looking them up, they probably can't.

Matty: About forensic meteorology, I think is what you said, was interesting to me because I'm a big aviation nerd and I have to say that I watch an embarrassingly large number of aviation accident investigations on YouTube. And it's interesting because there is always this aspect like at the time of the accident, you know, there was a scattered cloud layer at 1,000 feet. I never thought of that as being like a specific sort of expertise area, which is, I'm assuming what you mean by forensic meteorology.

Katherine: It is an expertise area. I always have weather in my novels because I love weather, and I think weather is a great character. So the first one has a hurricane, the second one has a tornado, and the third one has a snowstorm. And of course, forensic meteorology will figure into when you find bodies in these weather situations, they bring in expertise for that. But in particular, in the second novel, there was a device that was invented recently for looking at, you know, with a drone, getting sensor readings from trees, and how they would have sucked up nutrients from the soil, and if there were a body buried, it would show up in different foliage colors. Typically, you need the sensor to see it. It's not that visible to the human eye, so she comes in with her drone, and what she needs is Annie Hunter's access to cadaver dogs to corroborate. So it became a really fun scene, introducing her story, and then having that all in motion for what they needed to do. And then the meteorologist ended up in the third book because she, at the end of the second one, she says, "Oh, I found this case of someone who was killed in a tornado, and it looks like it wasn't an accident." So the weather figures into that. And that sets me up for the third one.

Matty: That's very cool. Yeah. I can imagine that the nutrients from the body are reflected in the trees in some way. It could not only be good for crime fiction, but also there's kind of like a fantasy-esque aspect there. I think that people who write fantasy as well are going to be intrigued by that. Like, that's a pretty cool idea.

Katherine: Yeah. And it's complicated because animals die too in the woods. So, hence the cadaver dogs, because they're specialists in human scent.

Matty: Yeah. It's very interesting. The timing of this is nice because I just interviewed Kathleen Donnelly about mistakes writers make about working canines. And part of the conversation was about search and rescue dogs and exactly what you're saying, you know, how do you train a dog to alert on human remains, but not chipmunk remains, for example.

Katherine: Yeah, and I worked with someone who did that, and we did several... I was on an exhumation team, so we did several searches with human
Here is the corrected text with improved readability:

Mistake #3: They profile a person.

Matty: Yeah, that's very interesting. One of the other things that you had sent as a mistake people make, which I think really goes to kind of probably the heart of a lot of what forensic psychology addresses, is that a mistake is that they profile a person. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Katherine: Yeah, they're not there to profile a person. The notion of that is like reading behavior, and typically that's about trying to do threat assessment, something like that. They're not there to, that's not what profiling is. Profiling is about what are the behavioral clues at a crime scene or series of crime scenes that we can try to figure out the type of person who would do this.

So you're focused on crime investigation and crime scene analysis, not reading a person, or you don't form a profile like a blueprint. It's not a blueprint against which you measure people, but that's a common misunderstanding in crime fiction and in crime shows. They'll say things like, he doesn't fit the profile, like, there isn't a profile of this. There's no profile of a serial killer. It's profiling the crime scene to see the kind of person who would do this. It's a very different concept, but there is a confusion, and part of it I will blame the show "Criminal Minds" for, because they used to misuse that concept of, you know, one would come in all tired, "Don't profile me," like, that isn't, that is not what we're talking about, you know, looking at you and trying to figure you out, that's not it at all.

Matty: So, can you describe, just walk through a scenario where the forensic psychologist is looking at the data that's appropriate for their role to be looking at and what kind of information they would and would not be sharing with the investigative team?

Katherine: Okay, well, a suicidologist, like my person, is going to be looking at antecedent behavior. They're going to be specifically looking for state of mind evidence to support or refute the possibility that a death scene is a suicide, and that follows something called the Nash classification: natural, accident, suicide, or homicide.

And if you can't figure out one of those classifications because the circumstances are too ambiguous and they can go more than one way, the forensic psychologist can do a mental state analysis to see what is the probability, based on everything we know, that this person was suicidal. And they're also going to be looking for signals to a staged kind of death incident. So, somebody killed the person and wants to make it look like an accident or suicide. What are some of the indicators that this is, in fact, staged? So, that's what a forensic psychologist could do. They would do what's called a psychological autopsy. And if they don't find a good sense that this person clearly had suicidal intent, or suicidal background, or ideation, they're going to suggest this is an indication that you should be looking in a different direction.

Matty: And that's focused specifically on the individual as opposed to, like, the physical circumstances of the death?

Katherine: You're, no, you're certainly looking at the physical circumstances, because that's the start of it. You're looking, victimology is the collection of facts about the death incident. You're not calling it a crime because you don't know what it is, so where was the person found? You know, what disposition were they found in? How did they die? So, you want cause and effect and mechanism of death. The Nash classification is manner of death, and so you want as much information as possible, but the psychologist is trained to ask people questions specific to suicidal state of mind and to look for signals, because there's a lot of myths out there in society about suicidal people. The suicidologist knows those myths, knows what to look for, and knows when it looks like we might have a staged crime.

Matty: Are there common pitfalls that a killer falls into either in real life or in the fictional world where they're acting on what they think is going to be an effective way of making a death look like a suicide when in fact what they're doing is counter to what a suicidologist would know to be more likely?

Katherine: Yeah, suicide notes are a good giveaway. My character Annie Hunter talks a lot about this because I've done suicide note studies specific to authentic versus faked suicide notes, and there are signals in faked suicide notes. When a killer has written one, they typically follow one of the myths or make a mistake about the decedent and just do odd things. Like, one killer had typed the suicide note. The woman, the decedent, always handwrote everything. She had nothing in her home on which to type anything, and she kept handwritten journals and whatnot. Also, he says something in the note about her new love and she didn't have anybody in her life, and everybody who knew her knew that. So these are all signals and errors that he had made. He assumed that if he staged the body right, the suicide note was going to be helpful. But a lot of people think suicide notes are always there, and they're not. They're only in about 25 percent of suicides, and when they are, they often are nothing like what you expect them to be. They're not explanations for why I do this. They're often instructions or other kinds of things. But people who are faking a suicide note make the wrong assumptions. And those who have studied suicide note content and format can see these things almost very quickly.

Matty: If a fiction writer is concerned about getting this right, are there resources they can go to, to see examples of actual suicide notes?

Katherine: Sure. The study I did is in a book called "The Psychology of Death Investigation." I did that with a coroner where we studied the suicide notes that he had collected over several years. And then we went to a person, the only person in the world who has a database for looking at content in a digital manner. So we had used some of her work as well. So that's right there in that book. You can find them on the internet if you just look up "suicide note," but you're not going to necessarily know the fake ones in terms of what's the difference. You'd have to look at a study like mine to know that. And also there are whole books devoted strictly to the analysis of suicide notes. So they're out there, you just have to go find them.

Mistake #4: They interrogate suspects.

Matty: Another mistake that you had called out that writers often make is that they interrogate suspects. Can you talk a little bit about what you've seen and what the truth is there?

Katherine: This is the notion, I think, that psychologists have some special insight on deception detection. Unless they're really trained well and have done a lot of research on it, they're no better, and neither are detectives, any better than the average person in seeing if somebody's lying. So sometimes you'll see a psychologist being put in place because a detective has just come up short.

So now they need to have the psychologist come in and do the interrogation and get the confession. And that just wouldn't happen. That's fraught with ethical issues and concerns, privacy issues that psychologists don't do that. Now, they might consult on, "Here's the behavior we see. This might be the best approach to this person. Here are some ideas for a strategy." They might do that, but they're not going in there and taking over the interrogation.

Matty: It is interesting when you think about, you know, you hear these things like if people look up and to the left, it means they're lying and things like that.

Katherine: Don't get me started.

Matty: Oh, I'm here to get you started.

Katherine: Exactly where that came from, and that's just silly. And what we do know about deception, there's been some great research on it. Again, this is available, but typically you have to do a search on Google Scholar to get these because they are academic articles.

But we do know that there aren't any clear signals to when someone's lying. You have to first study them for baseline behavior and then look at deviations, behaviors that deviate from that. And that's not necessarily, again, about deception. But those are red flags to now follow further investigation. It's not as simple as it seems. People, I know that detectives are trained on simple formulas, I know that they are, but those are misleading and get them into trouble, actually.

Matty: Have you ever encountered in real life or addressed in your fiction the scenario where an investigator has a feeling about, "I just knew he was lying," and now you have to resolve this into like a viable legal procedure to pursue whether the person is lying or not?

Katherine: Well, I often hear detectives say, "I'm the best lie detector there is." I hear that a lot, but the research doesn't support it. There are two groups that are, in fact, good at deception detection. Secret Service officers, because they're vigilant about that at all times, and gamblers. They are much better than detectives, psychologists, or judges, or parents, for that matter.

Matty: Now, do you think the Secret Service is good because they're picked because they display that ability, or do you...

Katherine: There's certainly ability, but there's training. There is also training, and they do turn up better on the research than other groups, but detectives don't. And the unfortunate thing is if you're too confident of your ability to do that, you can develop tunnel vision, confirmation bias, you know, all the cognitive error pitfalls because you're so confident of your ability, and that can be a problem. But you can turn that clearly into a character trait. It's called high need for closure, and we know a lot about that in the field of psychology. The kind of person who needs that closure and believes in themselves too much can help lead the plot.

Matty: Yeah, I think an interesting companion episode to this conversation would be, I had a conversation with Tiffany Yates Martin, who's an editor, about the pitfalls of magical knowing, and we talked about this idea that our theory was that when fiction writers get themselves into a jam, they sometimes fall back on this, "I just knew it, I just knew that she was lying," or "I just knew that he was such and such," and that oftentimes if you can step back from it a little bit, you can see that there's a much more interesting way of addressing that than, "I just had a feeling," which is a little bit unsatisfying, I think, for a reader.

Katherine: Yeah, and an honest investigator is going to know they can be duped, they can be mistaken, and they are more vigilant to that, and that's more helpful to an investigation.

Mistake #5: They undertake hypnosis or therapy in the courtroom.

Matty: This one was a very interesting one. You said one of the mistakes that you see writers making is that the characters, the forensic psychologists, undertake hypnosis or therapy in the courtroom. Talk about where you see that and why that's a no-no. Which I can understand. Just on the surface of that, that seems suspicious.

Katherine: I saw that in a James Patterson novel. As soon as that happened, I went, oh my God, no, that would never happen. And, you know, his fallback is, it's fiction. You can make it up. Well, you can, and you can do all the things that I'm saying are errors. But I'm saying you can stay true to the way it's done and still write good fiction. You don't have to do something like that. But when a psychologist goes into the courtroom, they're there for typically one of two reasons. Either they have been called upon to analyze, so they are experts to criticize the defendant and provide an opinion on their behavior, mental state, etc. Or they're there as experts to explain difficult concepts to the trier of fact, the jury or judge, depending on what kind of trial you have. So, they're not there to be therapists, they're not there to be advocates for the defendant in any way. And they're not there to demonstrate a methodology on a defendant without anyone knowing what the potential outcome might be. That isn't the way our courtrooms operate. Yes, there's surprise factors, great, but anyone who knows how this is done would stop reading immediately. This is horrible. And especially with hypnosis, it's not even allowed in the courtroom in most of the states. In this country, it's not allowed as part of the case. It used to be, but they have found that hypnosis is highly unreliable, and it plants false memories. I think it's only in New Mexico right now that allows it in a limited context. But if somebody were to do that in the courtroom, for me, as a reader, it's over.

Matty: Yeah. I feel like I see the whole hypnosis thing in the last, I don't know, five years or something like that. I see it more often as something that happens in an unauthorized manner. And then suddenly the investigators are faced with a situation where what they thought was a reliable witness or reliable story has suddenly been called into question because a person, like on their own, went and sought hypnosis or something like that. And now the things that the investigators were relying on that person to testify to, they can't rely on them anymore because they've muddied the water with the hypnosis.

Katherine: Now, there was a training program for law enforcement during the 1980s into the 90s, and Texas was a leader in this, investigative hypnosis. They used it a lot. They trained police officers in it, they trained prison psychologists in it, believing that it was giving them the truth about someone's memory. And now we have a lot more research showing that it just isn't as reliable. And if you're going to use it, there is one case, I think it's Hurd v. New Jersey, that puts the safeguards, shows if you're going to do it, you have to do it in this particular way. And if you do it outside that, then everything that you bring to the case is now suspect.

Matty: You know, one thing. This is not on any of your lists, but it just struck me, because this is a question I wonder about. Right after something happens, when the police interview someone, you know, it's just happened, it's fresh in their minds, and they're going to give us a story about what happened, a true story, perhaps, about what happened from their perspective. And then, you know, maybe the police come back a week later and they ask them again, and a month later and they ask them again. Maybe the thing goes to trial a year later, and they're being asked to answer the question again. And I always thought that if I were in that position of being a witness, let's say, that I would believe that my memory of what happened right after the incident was going to be as fresh as it was going to be, as fresh and as accurate as it was going to be. And I would just keep saying that same story, not because I was trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes, but because I would believe that I was being most accurate by just repeating what I originally said. But you don't see that like in real life and in fiction. You always see people's stories changing over time.

Katherine: You have so much faith in human memory, that what you are repeating, you think, is the same. But I think you would find out it likely has shifted a bit, especially if you've been told, "Oh, that's great, you're doing a good job." Because one of the best stories to demonstrate the problems of memory is the Jennifer Thompson-Ronald Cotton case, where she picked him out as her rapist. She was a young white woman; he was a black man. She was very articulate, she really wanted to do this right. The cops had already picked him out as their chief suspect. Terrible reasons. And they kept, you know, "Atta girl, you're doing great." The more they did that, the more confident she became in her memory. She kept telling the same story, but she became more confident, more confident, and then she picked him. He did look very much like the actual rapist, which she found out later. Ronald Cotton was convicted, went to prison for a lot of years, and then DNA exonerated him. She was horrified. Horrifying. They wrote a book called "Picking Cotton," which I thought was the greatest title for that, and they go around talking about this terrible mistake she made. A lot of it had to do with the way the police handled her, and the fact that they had made up their minds about him and didn't believe any of his alibi witnesses because they already had decided he was the guy, and they subtly manipulated her memory without her realizing over the course of preparation for trial. So that when she saw, and the most interesting part of this, when she found out who the real rapist was, her memory stuck with Ronald Cotton's face. Even though she knew it wasn't him, her memory stuck with him. And that's important. I think memory is such a malleable thing that people should educate themselves on the way memory works. You may really want to do the right thing, you may want to say the same thing over and over as you just said, but over the course of a year, maybe two years before it finally gets to trial, it's very likely you are not going to say the exact same thing you said on the day of the incident.

Matty: Yeah, if I were putting together a list of book ideas, if I needed that, I'd already have like six or seven from our conversation.

Mistake #6: Forensic psychologists pronounce defendants to be sane or insane.

Matty: Another mistake that you called out that writers make is that forensic psychologists pronounce defendants to be sane or insane.

Katherine: Yeah, people really confuse the idea of psychosis and insanity. During the 19th century, medical insanity was psychosis, different forms of psychosis, delusional disorders, schizophrenia, things like that. Over the course of it coming into the courtrooms, it has become a legal term, and it's very specific, and different states have different insanity standards.

But it is specific to whether the person has a disease or defect that prevents them from understanding that what they did was wrong. It gets complicated, but at any rate, it is for the trier of fact to decide if the person is sane or insane, not guilty by reason of insanity. It is not for the mental health expert to say it. They can talk about state of mind, psychotic features, diagnoses, but they're not there to pronounce the legal rendering. Insanity is a legal term. They're not supposed to address the ultimate issue for the courtroom.

Mistake #7: Forensic psychologists can accurately predict long-range future violent behavior without standardized tools.

Matty: And I think that the last question I wanted to ask about was the mistake writers make which is forensic psychologists can accurately predict long-range future violent behavior without standardized tools. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Katherine: Yeah. We try, and everyone seems to think that psychologists have a special insight into whether someone would be violent in the future. And they don't, but there are tools to assist. For prediction, to a certain extent, as long as all the factors in that person's life stay the same, any change is going to throw that whole prediction off. So they use different domains: the person's past history of violence, substance abuse, their association with violent peers, their role models, you know, there's a number of things that they look at, but they need to do it with standardized instruments that have already been proven to give reliable results.

And because if they don't, they could be liable if the person is allowed to leave prison or go on parole, whatever, they could be liable for behavior that that person did if they don't follow best practice standards. But they can only predict so far in like maybe 72 hours from once they leave the clinic or the prison. Anything, there's so many different things that could happen in their lives, that we really can't go very far with this. So, that's their limitation, and they do try to convey that to judges and police officers and whatnot. If somebody's going to be released and that person becomes violent, does something terrible, it's really not on them. They did everything they could within best practice standards. Now, if they didn't do that, like, just sort of, my feeling about this guy is that a woman is that they're gonna, they're gonna be fine and they use their gut clinical instinct. That's, you know, something from the 1960s. And, and wrong quite often. Standardized instruments assist with making careful decisions and taking a lot of factors into account, not just your gut instinct about a person. So it's not just about clinical instinct. It is about using the best tools we have and knowing what the limitations are, and it's very difficult to do. It's probably the most difficult thing a forensic psychologist is called on to do.

Matty: Is the forensic psychologist usually a consultant that an investigative arm like the police department brings in, or are there circumstances where a police department would employ a forensic psychologist? What is the organizational relationship there?

Katherine: Usually it's only in very large departments that have the funds to be able to hire someone like that. What they will do is fitness for duty exams, post-incident stress disorders. I mean, they have a specific set of duties. They're not profilers. That's not what they're there for. They are there specific to the mental condition of the officers and the staff. They're a staff person, essentially, or they might work in a prison, something like that. They, however, might be called in by attorneys to do assessments. So that's how they might get into a case, and that's an entrepreneurial thing. It's not a job for them, but they might get into a case for that. So now they're clinical forensic psychologists. They might be called in as consultants, but not very often, because the FBI does offer services for free from their profiling program, and not many departments have the funds to pay someone. Now, I have done consulting as a quid pro quo. I get case details I can teach in my classes in exchange for consulting on some of the suicide cases that I've done.

So it really has a lot to do with what resources do they have? What is their need? I remember one officer called me and said, "Our chief wants us to call the FBI profilers, but give me your opinion, what would they really say about this case that we're working on?" I wouldn't be able to say very much about it because there's not much behavior there at this point. So that's what I thought. And, you know, so his instinct was right about it. The profilers aren't, you know, magical, larger-than-life geniuses who can come in and offer the most amazing opinions on a case. They have to always work with behavior. So a psychologist will typically develop relationships with the local police officers, but they're probably not going to be called in very often on cases because, you know, they don't really need... you know, you're not going to get these thorny cases that often. Now, what you may get are people who are out in the community, and they're not well cared for by our system. They might be homeless, or they might, you know, we, we at this point don't hold people who might become dangerous unless they're imminently a threat, like imminently a threat. Not just maybe they're a threat or they're voicing threats. They have to be an imminent danger to self or others in order to be held for observation for a certain period of time, usually two or three days.

So those people might blow up all... you know, have a fight with their family members. We had one guy who killed both of his parents and then went down to the police department, and they knew he was potentially violent, but they could not do anything because it wasn't imminently violent. It was an explosive incident that couldn't have been predicted. So in a case like that, a psychologist might be asked to give advice. How do you, how do we deal with this? Because our hands are tied in terms of bringing them in and enforcing them into an observation situation. We, we can't, we used to be able to do that, and many mistakes were made holding people against their will, and they weren't in danger of being violent. So, I'm teaching like two weeks' worth of class here in five minutes, but it's a very complex and thorny issue, and I think for writers it can, the potential is there for a lot of great plot points and character points.

Matty: I'm just curious as to how the role, how the job has changed with social media, because now there is so much more potential fodder for documentation of a person's behavior that wasn't there 10, 15, 20 years ago. Is examining somebody's social media persona considered a valid part of forensic psychology?

Katherine: Yes, it definitely is. Any behavior, any layer of behavior. Now, you're going to run into privacy issues, so they are going to have to be working with somebody with a warrant or, you know, some good reason why the social media is being examined, but any of that would be useful, certainly.

Matty: So if someone is putting something out, you know, videos on Facebook or whatever, is there a legal, like, "I need to get a search warrant" kind of thing about that? Or if it's put out there publicly, can any investigator take advantage of it?

Katherine: It's still that same imminent threat, imminent danger. Just because somebody's venting, or even showing themselves with guns or whatever, doesn't mean they're going to do something, and you can't just go in and stop them. But we have risk levels, like low, medium, high risk. If they have a date and they name the Columbine killers and they have a location and they start giving details about how they've prepared for it, their risk of acting out rises. And yes, the police can go and bring them in because now they are an imminent threat to someone: the school system, the workplace, their family, whatever. But they've demonstrated with sufficient detail that they are planning, and they're putting a plan into motion, and they have the means to do it, and they have the mental set to do it. And there have been a number of these mass shooters stopped because of their social media kinds of things. And we also have examples of some who could have been stopped had the police looked at their social media. Because it was right there, what they were going to do, and how they were going to do it. And we need police to be more trained in cyber investigation.

Matty: Yeah, I can imagine that that's a whole thorny issue that if you are looking with 20/20 hindsight at someone who's done something horrible and you look at their social media feed and you see them making threats, then it seems very obvious. But then if you look at the other 99 percent of the people who said exactly the same thing, made exactly the same threats, made exactly the same kind of video, that didn't do anything.

Katherine: It didn't, right? And that's the problem. And it takes a certain critical mass before you can act and justify your actions as warranted. And if somebody's calling the police saying, "Hey, I saw this guy posting on social media, he's got a grudge list, you know, I'm named on the grudge list, he's got guns, I've seen them," they can go in and do something about that. But just because someone's venting, and which we have a lot of now with our political situation, just because someone's venting and showing themselves trying to look powerful and whatnot, you know, there's not a lot they can do, and that's our laws that keep them from doing that. The civil rights of the people come, to some extent, before safety. You know, it's just, what's the balance? Public safety versus people's rights, individual rights. It's unclear. There is no formula for knowing when it's the right thing to do to go in and try to intervene.

Matty: Well, I'd say if any fiction writer was looking for crime fiction-related topics to address and we haven't given them about a dozen possible ideas for stories, then they're just not paying attention. So, Katherine, thank you so much. This was so interesting. I appreciate you talking about this so much, and please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.

Katherine: Okay, well, actually, my website is devoted to the crime fiction series that I'm writing, the Annie Hunter series. I set up a website specific to that. That's KatherineRamsland.net. My other books are more true crime and real forensics related, but you can find everything on Amazon pretty much. And actually, I have book number 73 done this week, and that's a book for my horse.
Matty: Well, that's fantastic. Congratulations on that because that is an astounding number, and to add another one, another book to that number, is very impressive.

Katherine: Thank you.

Matty: Thanks so much.

Matty Dalrymple 6/11/24 Matty Dalrymple 6/11/24

Episode 242 - Uncovering Your Author Purpose with Greta Boris and Megan Haskell

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Greta Boris and Megan Haskell discuss UNCOVERING YOUR AUTHOR PURPOSE, including understanding your priorities and circumstances; having a unifying theme as a "hub"; the importance of alignment between your creative and business focuses; mining your fiction preferences for clarity about your author purpose; writing with a goal of marketability; the danger of shiny object syndrome; creating a reader-focused tagline; and having different taglines for the author and the books.

Greta Boris is a USA Today Bestselling mystery and thriller author. Megan Haskell is an award-winning fantasy adventure author. Together, they founded The Author Wheel, publishers of books, courses, and a podcast to help writers overcome roadblocks and keep their stories rolling. With over twenty-five years of writing and publishing experience between them, they’ve made the mistakes, so you don’t have to.

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Greta and Megan's Links:www.AuthorWheel.com
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Clarify | Simplify | Implement Newsletter: https://meganhaskellauthor.substack.com/

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Summary

This episode of "The Indy Author Podcast" features a discussion with Greta Boris and Megan Haskell, both accomplished authors and founders of the Author Wheel, a platform providing resources for writers. They explore the concept of author purpose, offering insights into personal experiences, industry observations, and strategies for authors to identify and align with their core motivations and goals in writing.

Megan Haskell shares her journey from using writing as a creative outlet to grappling with the commercial aspects of publishing. Her experience highlights the importance of understanding why one writes, to maintain joy and satisfaction in the process. Greta Boris adds to this by discussing how misconceptions about publishing paths can lead authors astray. They emphasize the significance of identifying one's unique authorial goals and preferences, rather than following generic or misleading industry norms.

The conversation delves into various author archetypes, such as the "bucket lister" and "calling card writer," illustrating the diversity in authors' motivations and the necessity of a tailored approach to publishing. This ties into the broader theme of author purpose, where understanding one's own goals and values is crucial for long-term satisfaction and success in the literary field.

Matty, the host, and the guests discuss the practical implications of author purpose, including the impact on publishing decisions and marketing strategies. They advocate for a balanced approach, considering both personal fulfillment and market demands. The dialogue also touches on the importance of authenticity in writing, with examples illustrating how a genuine connection to one’s work can enhance its appeal and longevity.

The discussion emphasizes the dynamic nature of an author's career, noting that goals and motivations can evolve over time. Reflecting on personal themes and reader expectations is highlighted as a way to maintain relevance and resonance in one’s writing.

In summary, the episode is a nuanced conversation about the concept of author purpose, offering valuable perspectives for writers at different stages of their careers. It underscores the importance of self-awareness, authenticity, and strategic planning in navigating the complexities of the publishing industry. The discussion serves as a reminder that while financial success is a common goal, the foundational element of a fulfilling authorial career is a deep understanding of and alignment with one’s personal motivations and objectives in writing.

Transcript

Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guests are Greta Boris and Megan Haskell. Hey Greta and Megan, how are you doing?

Greta: Hi, Matty.

Megan: We're good. Always happy to talk on the podcast.

Meet Greta Boris and Megan Haskell

Matty: I always love to talk with you guys. so just in case anyone, doesn't know about you guys, Greta Boris is a USA Today bestselling mystery and thriller author, and Megan Haskell is an award-winning fantasy adventure author. And together they founded the Author Wheel, publishers of books, courses, and a podcast to help writers overcome roadblocks and keep their stories rolling.

With over 25 years of writing and publishing experience between them, they've made the mistakes so you don't have to. And, Megan and Greta were last guests on episode 184, Planning a Novel.

Why a focus on author purpose?

Matty: So, I invited them back, because I wanted to talk about a topic that I know they have both thought about deeply, which is uncovering your author purpose, and I always like to start out these kind of conversations saying, What did you see in either your own author career or the career of the, authors you interact with that suggested that uncovering your author purpose was an important message to get out there? And, Megan, I will start with you. What do you think about that?

Megan: So this is actually a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. Greta and I are both, you know, Achiever personalities. And I in particular am a Type A Achiever, which is just like cherry on top of that, that particular ice cream sundae. and What happened for me, I'll tell my story, and that's that when I first started writing, it was all about that creative outlet.

I was sitting on the train, commuting into work every day, reading a lot of books, which was great, but I needed, and I had a number crunching job. I was an accountant, a forensic accountant, actually, at one of the big accounting firms, and so I needed that, creative moment in time where I could just sit with myself and process things and do something new and unique and You know, artistic.

And so that's how I started. But because of who I am and my personality and all these other things, once I started publishing, I immediately started going, okay, how do I make money doing this? How do I make this business? How do I like, and you start doing that grind and that, that churn on trying to, you know, You know, be a six figure, seven figure author and how you can't be successful or say you've achieved anything until you've actually hit those metrics, which is honestly kind of ridiculous because there are very, very few seven figure authors out there, So, for me, I had to come back to, why am I writing? It is not, it was never intended to be this grind. It was a creative outlet, and I needed to understand that piece of myself, and that piece of my own mission, why I'm telling stories, what drew me to this art, what I'm trying to bring to readers, all of those issues were incredibly important for finding the satisfaction I needed in the writing and bringing back the joy of writing itself.

Matty: I love the answer. Greta, what, what, attracts you to the idea of author purpose?

Greta: So, I mean, I also had a little come to Jesus meeting with myself, as my career progressed, but, I'll take it a different way. Megan and I were teaching quite a bit at conferences in the oily days, and we were teaching on, independent publishing versus traditional publishing.

At the time Megan was indie, I was traditional. And so we were kind of just trying to give people the broad scope. And what I really noticed was there's a lot of people who had just swallowed a line, like a something they'd heard as truth. And thought this is what you have to do. And they never stopped to figure out what they particularly were trying to accomplish.

You know, so you'd meet, people who were retired and had written their bucket list book, you know, that the book they never had time to write when they were corporate or whatever. And now they're in their sixties, they've written their first book. It's not particularly saleable, but it's their book and it's cool that they did it, but they think they have to pitch agents.

And they think that the only way they're going to get published.is if they get, you know, Penguin Random House to pick up their book and it's like that's just chances of that happening are kind of like getting bit by a shark, you know, so it's I

Matty: an interesting analogy.

Greta: My son is a surfer, so we use this analogy frequently, although his chances of being bit by a shark are probably greater than the average person's. But I digress.

Matty: You're swimming with sharks.

Greta: Exactly. So, so we began, we actually started this concept with this little thing we did called an author personality quiz, and it was just kind of to help people realize that no, not everybody needs to get an agent and not everybody needs to be an authorpreneur either and study all the things there is about indie publishing and learn how to do crazy Facebook ads and run book club ads and do all that.

Not everybody needs to do that. Some people Just need to do a good job and maybe get some help and publish that one book and send the link to all their friends and family and that's what's going to satisfy them. So, that's kind of where it started, but then as we began to work more and more with authors who are more similar to us, you know, trying to actually at least cover their costs with their publishing life or maybe make a few bucks, then it became honed into more of a, well, there's so many ways that you can do this.

So, what are you actually trying to accomplish? Who are you? And that kind of thing. So that’s where we started kind of getting deeper into, what is your author purpose?

Understanding your priorities and circumstances

Matty: Well, that is, uh, really resonates with me for two reasons. One is that it was interesting because I was putting together a presentation, for people who didn't know anything about publishing. It was going to be, if you want to indie publish, here are the options. And I organized, just for the part that was like production and distribution, I organized it from kindle if you value money over time, and then if you value time over money, and so the first level I put was, if you want to get your book out there to a lot of different places, and you're not really worried about how much money you make, then just do it all through Draft2Digital, because you can get to, Pretty much anywhere that most people in the American market are going to want to get to.

You can do it through ebook and print. And you only have to go to one place. You only have to deal with one company. and it's the most time efficient way. And I showed that to a couple of, my fellow indie authors, and they were all horrified that I would suggest to somebody that they not at least go direct to Amazon.

I was like, yeah, because, you know, I think all three of us and probably many of the listeners want to make some money and there are financial reasons that you would want to go to Amazon Direct and not through Draft2Digital. But if you just want to get your book out there and you don't care how much money you're going to make and you don't have very much time, you know what, Draft2Digital is the way to go.

Greta: We'll do it for you.

Matty: yeah, they'll do it for you.

Megan: And I think that's so key right there, and that's why I think the mission statement is not just for how you're developing your author strategy, it's also, it's internal and external. It's both pieces coming together, because you have to understand what your own goals are before you can decide what strategy you want to pursue.

and They're all valid strategies, they're all valid reasons for writing or publishing, whether you're what we called in that author personality, quiz, the bucket lister, who's just written a book because it was something they always wanted to do and they just had one story that they wanted to tell or it's their memoir or whatever, that's the bucket lister.

Or maybe you're what we called a calling card writer, which is someone who has a business, and that book is going to support that business. It's going to be your calling card. Calling Card, hence the name. and then there's the artist and the entrepreneur. And we had all these different personalities, and the concept has really evolved over time, but ultimately it comes down to understanding yourself, your goals, your motivations, and your processes so that you can find that satisfaction and reach the right kinds of readers in the right places and the right way over time, whatever that length of time is for you. I think that's so, it's so important to have both of those aspects when you're considering, you know, what you're doing and why. Why, why pick this job, this horrible, painful, wonderful job, if you don't have to?

Matty: That said, I love the names you're throwing out, like the bucket list and the calling card, the entrepreneur. I think that this idea of, having those kinds of, that kind of terminology for these different purposes is really great.

Understanding what's "you"

Matty: And the other reason that this resonates with me is that, So, we're recording this toward the end of March in 2024, and at the end of 2023, I made a resolution for myself, which was that I was going to stop cutting myself off from possible financial benefits for personal reasons. This isn't quite the right way to describe it, but as an example, I'm working with someone to try to improve, engagement with my YouTube channel.

And I look at, across all the big name YouTube channels out there, especially ones that are author facing, And a lot of them have the, the thumbnail with the person having the very dramatic facial expression, oh, and, he said, well, you know, that's what's popular. You should do that. And I was like, oh, no, I couldn't do that.

Greta: It’s not me.

Matty: Exactly. And so, and I haven't yet. and I realized that although. Oh, and the same thing, I could generalize this to like book covers, you know, sometimes people will say if you just put like Haunted House on the front of your Ann Kinnear books, you'd sell more.

And I was like, Oh, no, no. And I think in 2024 was when I was going to try to get over that, just get over myself and do the things that were going to make these more financially viable. And in some cases, I have been in some cases, I'm just like, I don't know. Evidently, the making the money isn't the top priority for me. This is me is the most important for me, which I think is very much in line with what you're saying about author purpose.

Greta: And I do think that in the long run, you're better off. Doing the, this is me, because that's something else for those of us who've been around for a little bit, I've seen is it's almost like when somebody decides to write to market, but it isn't really the book series or this that, that they want to write.

It's not like I'm going to take this thing I want to write and I'm going to tweak it a little bit, pivot it a little bit. Toward the market, that I think is one thing, but when somebody just like pulls from air, Megan's a fantasy writer, a little bit of romance in her books, but she hears romantasy is the big thing, so now all of a sudden, she decides to write some like Hot spicy fairy thing, but it's not her. And so is it going to come across? Is it going to seem genuine? Is it going to work? And is it going to have legs? Is it going to have longevity? My guess is no.

Megan: Even if the book itself initially does well with readers, if it hits the market just right, you've analyzed things properly or whatever for your go to market strategy, if you don't love that book, you're not going to want to promote it. You're not going to want to build that long term. And so for me, again, going back to my story, it's more important for me to put my heart and soul in those books and take my time and tell the story the way I want to tell it.

And if I need to go back and revise it a few times than so be it. Or if I adjust my, my, not that I outlined, but my plot points or whatever. You know, a few times, that satisfies that artistic piece of my soul, and then once that book comes out, I know I'm going to love it, and I'm going to be able to keep pushing that series.

And so, even my debut series, right now I'm actually in the process as we record this of, putting together a Kickstarter for a special edition of my debut novel, because I still love that story! Even though it came out originally in 2015, it's almost a decade old! But, but I still love that story, because I wrote it from the heart, and not from the market.

Writing with a goal of marketability

Megan: And that works for me. Now, other people, some people come to writing, and this is, you know, this is not a negative thing. Some people come to writing going, I'm a good writer. I can do this. I can tell stories. I can make money doing this. And they can write really fast, and they come at it from that perspective essentially from day one and that works for them.

And I think that's just a different business model. It's a different strategy. But knowing that about them versus knowing what I know about me changes how you approach this business.

Matty: also think it depends on if you've established, a relationship with a piece of work. And so, you know, I was, I started my first book in 2011, so, you know, I've learned a lot, both from a business and a creative point of view since then. But I had set that series on a trajectory that I wanted to stick with because I enjoyed it.

But I have now six books in my one series, I'm. By the end of this time next year, I'll probably have six books in my other series. It's like a nice little package of two series, and I can imagine writing a standalone and doing it much more Intentionally, from a marketability point of view than I did with my other books, because both of those series were just kind of like the books of my heart, but saying, you can see “Save the Cat Writes a Novel” on my table back here, studying that carefully and saying, you know what, I'm going to, step through this and I'm going to see what it, you know, where it takes me because it's not that I creatively object to that approach, it's just that I can't now apply that to books that already have their own personality.

So I feel like I could shift my author purpose for a completely new product, but I can't shift in mid series for something that's already established in my mind and heart.

Megan: think that makes a lot of sense. I also think doing that process of going through the Save the Cat book is such great practice. I mean, being able to do that for a standalone one book project because you want to learn and because you want to do more, try something different, totally valuable experience, but a very different experience than, as you said, the series from the heart.

Matty: Yeah, I was talking with somebody about that, and they said, oh, you're going to go back and apply that structure. as a study to your early books, and I was like, oh God, I don't think so, because I don't want to find out that, you know, oh, I only have seven beats or, you know, in whatever way I'm deviating from whatever the best practices are.

And I said, no, that's like a, that's a done thing. I'm going to set that aside. I'm going to let it, you know, let it live on its own. It's popular with readers, so I'm not going to mess with that. But going forward, from some point going forward, it would be an interesting study.

Your evolution as an author

Greta: Well, also, as Megan said, going through this kind of, process, you do change, you know, like who you are as a, as an author in your first couple of books is not probably who you are as an author today. And also your, your goals, your motivations and all those things will change over time. And it's funny that, we'll talk about this later, I'm sure, but we have a free course on our website, about this.

What stays consistent over time

Greta: And. A lot of the questions we ask are things that even go back to childhood, because you'll, you, I think that most of us have certain themes that are just in our hearts. Those are the themes that we are the most, that resonate with us, that we really, you know, so If you have certain themes in your heart, chances are even if you changed genres, like even if I said to myself, I'm not going to, I want to try writing something that isn't mystery thriller, you know, I want to try writing a sci fi.

I do love sci fi. I bet you it would still have a lot of those themes that were in my mystery thrillers because I can't help myself. That's where I, this is where I come from. And so those are some of those are the kinds of things that we do explore in that little course because I think understanding yourself also can help you to find those reader connections so that, say, I have people who love my one series which is, more humorous mystery.

How many of those readers can I move over to my more psychological suspense that isn't funny? Not all of them, but if they understand the things that are near and dear to my heart as a writer, I bet you a lot more of them are going to come over so I can highlight those things. You know, the things that attract people to a Greta Boris book.

It's still a Greta Boris book over here, even though it's a slightly different genre. So understanding those things about yourself can even help you, put your best foot forward with readers.

Matty: Well, that's a really nice harking back to an episode I did recently with Pamela Fagan Hutchins, where she was talking about moving from indie publishing, her books to, getting a deal with Bookouture. And she was talking very explicitly about this idea of having to kind of mount a campaign with her followers saying, everybody just calm down.

It's still me out here. it's going to be a little bit different, the, like she was moving from, from more of a, like an amateur. Sleuth kind of scenario to a, or a thriller scenario to a police procedural scenario. And being very intentional about saying to her readers, you know, yes, it's a different cast of characters. Yes, it's a different genre, but it's still, I'm still here. I think she even said that it's still me behind the pen.

Megan: I think that's exactly right. I think there are elements that carry through all of our stories. It kind of has to be that way. And in fact, I’ll tell another little story on myself too. I didn't realize I wrote Portal Fantasy until a year or two ago when a friend pointed it out and he was like, yeah, you realize all your books are portal fantasy, right?

And I was like, no, I've got like this, like more epic thing and I've got this action adventure, secondary world thing, and I've got this contemporary. Urban, paranormal thing, it's like no no no, but they all travel between worlds okay, yes, you're right,

Greta: We, we have a mutual friend who writes in all different genres. I mean, she's got young adult, she's got romance, she's got time travel, she's all over the map. And, she was like on her, I don't know, ninth book or something, and one of her friends said, It's so interesting how you manage to explore the concept of life after death in every single one of these genres.

And she goes, I do? She was like, really? And then she went and looked at her own books and she was like, gobsmacked. Yes, I do. And it's so funny. Sometimes we don't even realize what we're doing because so much of the story's telling is coming from our subconscious.

Matty: I do think that there are, those are all great examples of things that, the author themselves is probably going to be the last one to realize.

Mine your fiction preferences for clarity about your author purpose

Matty: A couple of times we've mentioned this idea of how the things you like to read match or are different from the things you like to write. And I know one of your theories is that you can mine your fiction preferences for clarity about author purpose.

Megan: um, yeah, no, I think that's so key, and I think sometimes that's why the go to market strategy doesn't work for some authors, because, we are drawn to writing typically for most people because we're drawn to reading. We're drawn to story. And what kind of story we enjoy reading is generally going to be the kind of story that we enjoy writing.

So, you know, if you're like, as a kid, I read fantasy, like from, I think my dad gave me, The Hobbit originally in like fourth grade. And from that point forward, if I had a free book, you know, fun reading book. It was. 90 percent of the time, it was a fantasy book. And so I went through all of Tolkien, I went through Anne McCaffrey, I went through Anne Rice, all these different authors, and the thing that ultimately, starting probably in high school through college and everything, again, for the fun, enjoyable reading, not school reading, which is entirely different, but for that fun stuff, It was that action adventure, female led protagonist, okay, Tolkien aside, that got me in, but after that, but the female, you know, the female led story, the kick ass heroine, the, adventure across different realms and quests that escape into other lives and lifestyles and all of that, that was what I loved to read.

And what's interesting is that When I went to go write my epic, I really struggled because I actually, even though it's still fantasy, epic is not the thing that I really enjoy reading. I like a faster pace. I like a little bit less description. I like something that's a little bit more, contained and, A little bit more thrilleresque, right?

That's what I enjoy reading. So I had to come back to that style to be satisfied in my own writing. And so I think that's true for most people when they're writing. Like if you're going in saying, I'm going to write, I've never read a romance in my entire life, I'm going to go write a romance--

Greta: Because that's what's selling.

Megan: Yeah, because I can make seven figures selling spicy romance. Maybe you will, but is that, again, going to satisfy that artistic piece of your soul? Which, this is an art, you know, we sometimes forget that, I think, but it is an art, and so finding that satisfaction is kind of key. So I think looking back at how you progressed through your own reading, what genres, what styles, what tropes you've enjoyed as a reader will really lend itself to that sustainability in your author career.

The roll of tropes

Matty: So, we've been talking, a lot about, personal preferences and genre and so on, but I, but you just mentioned something that I think is very important, which is tropes, and,

but the other thing that I'm going to do, in addition to using the, Save the Cat or whatever, structure thing I land on, is that I'm going to go through and I'm going to highlight all the tropes that I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, I love that.

And then see if I can figure out a way to work that in. Am I working against the whole author purpose concept, or is this all legit stuff?

Greta: No, it's legit because, I also, we do talk about this in our, course on genre, is that, Often, if you were to just try to write a staple standard story, like you took the beats, the romance beats, and you went, okay, first you have the meet cute, and then you have the this, and then you have the, and you did all that, that could be an AI book.

I mean, that's pretty dang formulaic, right? What makes a book more unique, or writing more unique, is the whole idea that I love. A lot of tropes that come from horror, but they don't write horror. But hey, I got some pretty scary stories, bits in my stories, because those horror things can come through those tropes that I'm kind of pulling.

Also, I love post-apocalyptic fiction, but I don't write it. But there are tropes in post-apocalyptic fiction that I might pull, probably not even consciously, but subconsciously, and inject them into my stories, that are humorous mysteries. So, and that's what can really make a story, uniquely yours because Megan and I like to teach in that, in those courses that what readers really love is they love something familiar with a twist. If you're too out there, you're not going to get a whole lot of, at least readers who aren't stoned.

Megan: If you're too out there, it's more a problem of not being able to market it, quite honestly, because you have to be able to explain It's this balancing act. You have to be able to explain what you're writing, what your story is about, and you have to make that familiar, because the familiarity is what people will resonate with.

That's what's going to, they know what to expect, right? But at the same time, you have to twist it. And so you have to add in some other things. So if you go too far out, it just seems like it's all over the place. Like, this is, there are too many mismatched things, and I don't know what this is. I'm not going to read this.

I'm not going to buy it. Even if it's a fabulous story, I don't know what it is, so I'm not going to spend money on it. so I think that's really important, too, is understanding, what those You know, yes, like having those tropes in your story, making the familiar with a twist, but being able to sell it is where the, where, that's where the go to market strategy goes for me.

Having a unifying theme as a "hub"

Matty: I have a wheel metaphor that you guys have probably already come up with, but, it's new for me, so I'm going to share it, and you can tell me if it's in line with the author wheel concept, and that is that I think as long as there's the unifying hub, and so, the way I've thought about this in the past is, Outfit, putting together an outfit.

So you can, let's say you got a new shirt. Just bear with me. And you say, I really want to wear this new shirt. And you know what I this scarf would look really good with a shirt. And you know what would look really good with a scarf, this pair of pants, and I love it. The shoes that go with this pair of pants are great.

And then that I, when I wear these shoes, I always want to wear this hat. And then you stand back, and you think, what have I done? Because I have this, now I have this completely sort of discombobulated outfit where the hat has no connection to the shirt that started it all off. But if you say, I like the, I love the shirt, and I want to have a scarf to wear with it.

Okay, now I'm going to go back to the shirt, I'm going to say, what pants do I want with it? Now I'm going to go back to the shirt and say, what shoes do I want to wear with it? And then you have a unified look. And in the same way, if you have some kind of driving theme, like for me, a driving theme in my books is what happens when an extraordinary ability transforms an ordinary life?

Because I like that. I'm just going to tweak one thing. I'm going to take a world that's largely realistic. I'm going to tweak one thing in it. But you know what? I really love this horror trope and I'm going to see how that relates to this idea of the extraordinary ability. Oh, I love this, this romance trope.

I'm going to see how that relates. so you have the spokes, you have the hub idea, but you have the spokes that, are all connected to the hub. What do you author feelers think about that?

Greta: Love it. We have not used that analogy, but we're going to steal it! That's a good one. It's true in decorating too. if you're going to redo a room often they say to choose an inspiration piece, so sometimes it's a piece of art, and sometimes it's a piece of furniture, sometimes it's whatever it is, and then you kind of build a harmonious whole around that inspiration piece, and I had never thought about that with writing before, but I love it. A good way of looking at things.

Megan: and I think, to take this back to an earlier point in our conversation as well, that hub, that, that central piece is going to be the element that has drawn you to reading, has drawn you to fiction your entire life. So that's going to be, that's where that mining the history and then layering on the fun tropes, it all comes together.

Matty: I do think that my, Lizzy Ballard book, I'm working on the fifth book now. I think I will wrap up the Lizzy Ballard storyline largely in six books. And then I have an idea for a spinoff, a spinoff character that I could build another series on. And I think it would be fairly easy to make it more, you know, Center of genre, as, Sasha Black talks about, that if you're center of genre, then it's a more easily marketable work because people understand what they're signing up for, and that this would be a super cool way, this idea of the driving idea, and these other things we've been talking about would be, I'm all excited about jumping ahead to that.

The danger of shiny thing syndrome

Greta: I know. That's so, that's one of the hard things about this writing life is that books take a long time to write, and we get so many fun and exciting ideas and things we want to do. And we have to, whoa, Nellie, slow down, because you got to finish what you started which is also a point. I'm in favor of this whole under, you know, know thyself, understand your author mission, your author purpose, because we are most writers that I know are very creative, you know, very, it's the most fascinating people in the world.

I love writers. Because of that, they're interested in so many things, they really fall prey to Shiny Thing Syndrome. And that's when, especially writers who can write really fast, sometimes you can see a big fat hot mess in their backlist like nobody knows what they're doing. And I do think that there is a point for that, for understanding your I love your author purpose and mission because, you know, it'll help you choose which of those shiny things actually are going to help you further your goals and your purposes.

Like a spinoff on your Lizzy Ballard series that makes perfect sense. But if you all of a sudden decided to write Ukrainian cookbooks, it might not help your purpose. Backlist that all, you know.

Matty: Yes, exactly. Well, my terror, it's always that, somebody’s going to expect me to write romance and I'm like, oh my god, nobody, no, nobody needs to read that, it'd be the world's worst.

Megan: I keep getting a lot of that from people too, oh, you should just write, just get it steamy and it'll sell.

Matty: I had a scene in one of my Ann Kinnear books, everybody always wants Ann Kinnear to you know, have a romantic relationship with someone. I was like, okay, fine, but, you know, it's all going to happen off the page. But there's a scene in one of my books where the scene starts out and Ann is lying in bed and she hears this other character, you know, one of the male characters that everybody wants her to get together with, she hears his voice a couple of feet away and my editor said he was reading it, he was like, a couple of feet away, that seems weird, and as it turns out, spoiler alert, he's not in bed with her, he's, there's someone stalking her and he, who is, he's a police officer and he's sitting in the room with her so that when the stalker arrives, he'll be there to protect her.

Greta: That's pretty funny. We were talking to an audiobook narrator. who, I can't remember if it was a book she wrote or a book she was just narrating, but it had steamy stuff and she thought she was going to be fine with it. And she said she had to keep stopping and giggling and then get back into narrating. It was like she was really struggling with it. She's yeah, maybe this isn't my genre, you know,

Matty: Yeah, that would be tough. I always want to ask somebody who writes steamy romance, I'm such a teenager, because what I want to ask them is, do your parents read this? So how do they think about it? Because that's all I could think of. If my parents were still around and I was writing steamy stuff, I'd just be like, oh god, I hope mom and dad aren't reading this.

Greta: or worse to your, are your children reading this? Yeah. Now that my kids are adults.

Matty: Yeah. Okay. Well, then we're just, I'm just reflecting my own personal, deep-seated issues with this discussion.

Creating a reader-focused tagline

Matty: But the last topic that we had agreed to talk about was, turning everything we've talked about into a reader focused tagline. And I think this is an interesting way to bring together the idea of understanding your author purpose from a creative point of view and understanding your author purpose from a business point of view.

that this is the, you know, the reader focused tagline is what you're putting out there to hopefully attract readers and make your book financially successful. So, Is this in fact a way, like, how do you reconcile those two things if perhaps you feel like your author purpose, your creative and your business author purposes are not in alignment and maybe that shows up as you start thinking about more reader focused things like the tagline.
Megan, I'm going to throw that out to you.

The importance of alignment between your creative and business focuses

Megan: Sure. So first off, I would say get that into alignment. I mean, that's really the core point of our seven days to what it's seven days to clarity. How to build your mission statement course. It's once you understand where you're coming from, your past, what you're doing now, what you, what your goals are, what you want to, you know, achieve for readers, those, what kinds of readers you want to attract, that's, that should lead into what you're writing.

And then that writing should lead into a tagline. So my tagline, for example, is escape into myth, magic, and mayhem. All my books have myth, they all have magic, and they all have mayhem. They're action, fantasy, adventure. Right? That's what I write. And so if you can say that quickly and express that to readers, you're more likely to be able to have that Comprehensive or unified backlist or future list as you continue to write.

So I think that's, one of the things that we've seen from some of our other author friends. We're talking about, you know, fast writers who have this massive backlist and it's just all over the place. Finding that unifying theme and then packaging your books in a way to Identify that theme for, you know, for your readers and bring that all together and package it all up into a single tagline.

It might be really hard to do, but we believe there will be a way to do that. That there will be a unifying element or theme or concept within your backlist that you can find and bring to light into your own tagline.

Different pen names for different purposes

Greta: And sometimes it's pen names. Sometimes that helps people recognize, like if you absolutely can't, and you've got six books over here that do one thing, and then you've got four books over here that do another thing, maybe. You need two pen names. And then you could have a purpose for each, for each version of yourself and a tagline for each version of yourself.

So that's another thing that we do talk about a little bit in that course. It's if you can't pull it all together, can you separate it into one or two pen names? You know, is that, will that help the process? You know, my tagline is murders that hit home and it's because I tend, even my suspense or more domestic suspense, I don't have police procedurals.

I don't have, you know, Navy SEALs or global espionage or it's all. Tucked here in Southern California, which is where I live, and they all kind of revolve around personalities and relationships because that's what fascinates me. So I think that, and then I realized, you know, that tagline works for my mortician mysteries, which are cozier, cozyesque, paranormal, funnier.

And then my almost true crime series that's coming out, which is It's almost true crime, which is not that funny and it's not as cozy, but they're both still murders that hit home. They have those common themes, which are, you know, I like to explore the psychology and the relationships and why do people commit crimes and those kinds of things. That's going to come out in all my books.

Megan: And they all have dead bodies.

Greta: Oh, absolutely.

Matty: Yeah, and I think that it's nice because you've both picked taglines where you are sending a very clear, message to the reader and that if someone, you know, reads Murders and Home in the same sentence or you, they read, Myths of Mayhem in the same sentence then it's going to give a very clear, and helpful idea to them of whether your books are for them or not.

Megan: I've been thinking about, I'm going to have a standalone coming out probably later this year that is not, you know, both my existing series, there is this, The Extraordinary Ability that Transforms the Ordinary Life, it's a different Extraordinary Ability in each series, but that's the common theme, but I'm thinking I almost need to tweak the tagline for that one very explicitly to be, What happens when an ordinary person is faced with extraordinary circumstances, or some flavor of that, because I like that juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extraordinary, but in this it's a little bit, you know, It's the idea of an ordinary person stepping up to, to deal with an extraordinary situation.

Matty: So, but there's still consistency there, I think.

Different taglines for the author and the books

Greta: with which your tagline, your, and so this is something too that we teach in the courses that a book tagline is different than an author tagline. And an author tagline is more all-encompassing. Whereas a book like, you know, the mortician mystery is I've been playing around with different taglines for the different titles, but it's usually like a paranormal mortician murder or, something like that's very targeted to that series.

But like an author mission, like yours could be something like where the extraordinary meets the ordinary or where the ordinary meets the extraordinary, because then it would work whichever way you wanted to play with that. Yeah. I won't even charge you for that one.

Matty: We're trading for the clothing and hub thing in exchange for the tagline.

Greta: Exactly. But we do have a little fill in the, several little fill in the blanks kind of things to help people build their tagline. So it's not just now come up with this, it's like you're doing these fill in the blank sentences and then you're editing them and you're, so we do have some steps to that to make it easier.

Matty: Well and I know that you guys have resources to help us out. Can you describe what those are and, where people can go to find them? Megan, I'll throw it out to you.

Megan: sure. So, if you go to authorwheel.com slash stuff, that's where we have all of our current freebies. when you know, subscribe to our list, you get, you can get all of them or download all of them. The one that we are talking about the most in this podcast is the Seven Days to Clarity Uncover your author purpose, and it is a seven-day free little email mini course. we are actually currently as we record this in the process of converting it from like strict email to a more online course where you'll just get a new lesson every day. But you'll still just go over to authorwheel.com slash stuff to sign up and check that out.

Matty: So cool. And I want to uh, give you both a chance to just, direct people to your, fiction writing as well. So, Greta, why don't you, let us know where people can go to find that?

Greta: Yeah. Well, everything that I'm doing is at GretaBoris.com. And I also have, of course, a novella in the mortician mystery world, mortician murder world there for you. It's called Mortuary School. And you can find out what happens when Imogene Lynch goes to Mortuary School.

Matty: Excellent. And Megan, how about you? Where can people find out more about your fiction work?

Megan: Sure, so I'm at MeganHaskell. com, and for mine, you can actually download, I sell all my books in all formats that I have available on my website directly, but the first book, in the Sanyari Chronicles, The Last Descendant, is available for free on my website in ebook form, so you can just go there and download that for free, and then I have some other short stories and things that are available as well.

Matty: So cool. Well, thank you so much, you guys. Always lovely to chat with you. And, thank you for, shedding some light on the author purpose.

Megan: Absolutely, anytime.

Greta: Thanks for having us on, Matty.

Matty Dalrymple 6/4/24 Matty Dalrymple 6/4/24

Episode 241 - Mistakes Writers Make About Working K-9s and How to Avoid Them with Kathleen Donnelly

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Kathleen Donnelly discusses MISTAKES WRITERS MAKE ABOUT WORKING K-9s AND HOW TO AVOID THEM, including whether a dog can track across water or track a person in a car; whether one scent can be disguised with another; what makes it difficult for a dog to track and how to evade tracking dogs (maybe); training rescue and human remains dogs; training the alert signal; identifying candidate dogs; when training starts; the role of the handler; what happens if a dog flunks out; the caveat that every agency is different; and how to get more information.

Award-winning author Kathleen Donnelly has been a handler for Sherlock Hounds Detection Canines—a Colorado-based narcotics K-9 company—since 2005. Her debut novel, CHASING JUSTICE, won the American Book Fest Best Book Award and a PenCraft Award, and it was a 2023 Silver Falchion finalist in the Suspense category and Readers’ Choice Award. She lives near the Colorado foothills with her husband and four-legged coworkers.

Episode Links

https://kathleendonnelly.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKathleenDonnelly
https://www.instagram.com/authorkathleendonnelly/
https://twitter.com/KatK9writer

Summary

Kathleen Donnelly, an award-winning author and experienced canine handler for Sherlock Hounds Detection Canines, shared her expertise on The Indy Author Podcast, discussing the intricacies of working with narcotics detection dogs and the common misconceptions about them in literature. This discussion was part of a series focusing on crime fiction writing, where experts talk about realistic portrayals of various professional fields.

Key Themes and Discussions:
1. Canine Training Variability: Donnelly emphasized the differences in training techniques across agencies, highlighting that while her dogs are play trained (rewarded with toys), others, like ATF dogs, might be food trained. This underscores the importance for writers to research specific agency practices to enhance the authenticity of their narratives.

2. Myths about Canine Tracking Abilities: She debunked popular myths about canine tracking, particularly the Hollywood portrayal of dogs losing scent trails in water. Contrary to this, Donnelly illustrated with examples that dogs can effectively track through water and even follow a scent after the tracked individual has taken a vehicle, a skill dependent on advanced training and the dog's capabilities.

3. Challenges in Canine Tracking: Tracking accuracy can be affected by environmental factors such as wind and urban settings, where scents can be dispersed unpredictably. Donnelly also discussed how heavy foot traffic can complicate tracking, but trained dogs can often handle these challenges.

4. Types of Work for Different Dog Breeds: The conversation touched on choosing appropriate breeds for different types of jobs. For instance, labs and beagles are often used in non-intimidating roles like bomb detection or searching for food at airports due to their friendly appearance, whereas breeds like German Shepherds or Malinois might be chosen for more aggressive roles.

5. Operational and Ethical Training Considerations: She covered the ethical considerations and legal boundaries of using detection dogs, especially in sensitive environments like schools, underlining the need to respect privacy and legal limits. Donnelly also mentioned that the Supreme Court rulings influence how and where dogs can be used, especially concerning personal searches.

Significant Data or Findings:
- Canines possess an extraordinary sense of smell, capable of distinguishing individual components within a complex scent profile, such as identifying drugs hidden among other strong odors like coffee, a fact that dispels another common myth.
- Advanced training techniques have evolved to meet operational needs, such as teaching dogs to continue tracking even after a subject enters a vehicle, which historically would end the trail.

Overall Implications and Conclusions:
The discussion highlighted the complexity and depth of training and deploying detection dogs, pointing out the need for rigorous training regimes tailored to specific operational goals. For writers, this translates into a necessity for detailed research to portray these animals realistically in crime fiction. Donnelly’s insights serve as a crucial resource for understanding the nuances of canine behavior and training, providing rich material for enhancing narrative authenticity.

Notable Quote:
Kathleen Donnelly pointed out, "If you really want the dog to miss something, you need to pay off the handler," humorously hinting at the dogs' infallible nature unless human error—or manipulation—intervenes. This reflects the high level of reliability in trained canines, making them invaluable in law enforcement and search and rescue operations.

Transcript

Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indie Author Podcast today. My guest is Kathleen Donnelly. Hey Kathleen, how are you doing?

Kathleen: Hey, I'm doing well. Thanks for having me today.

Meet Kathleen Donnelly

Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners and viewers a bit of background on you, award-winning author Kathleen Donnelly has been a handler for Sherlock Hounds Detection Canines, a Colorado-based narcotics canine company, since 2005. Her debut novel "Chasing Justice" won the American Book Fest Best Book Award and a PenCraft Award. It was also the 2023 Silver Faus finalist in the suspense category and won a Reader's Choice Award. She lives near the Colorado foothills with her husband and four-legged coworkers. I recently interviewed Kathleen for my video series, "What I Learned," where she shared some of the lessons from her novel, "Killer Secrets," that she'd like to share with her fellow readers and writers.

Matty: As we talked, I realized Kathleen would be a perfect addition to my informal mini-series for everyone who reads or writes crime fiction, mistakes writers make, and how to avoid them. In the past, I've chatted with experts about firearms, police procedure, coroners, first responders, the FBI, PIs, forensic psychiatry, police roles, bladed weapons, and firefighters.

Matty: Kathleen is going to add to that list by talking about mistakes writers make about canines and how to avoid them. Any conversation about canines is good with me, so I think this is going to be super fun. Kathleen, you and I were chatting a bit before we started recording, and you mentioned there was a caveat you wanted to add to what we were going to discuss. Did you want to share that?

Every agency is different

Kathleen: Sure, I'll kick off with that because I've realized over the years as I've talked to writers about canines, who are trying to research and get it right, is that every agency is a little different. For example, I play train my dogs, which means they get a toy as a reward, whereas the ATF food trains. That's just one example of many where, if you're researching for your book and you want to expand on it, you should reach out to each individual agency you want to use. If you're going to use the ATF, reach out to them and find out how they train their dogs and just things like that. This will be a great way to give you some starting points and some great questions to be able to reach out to those agencies and find out.

Matty: And within an agency like the ATF, is that the standard, like, if you're writing something about ATF, can you assume that's the approach you take, or would different branches of the ATF perhaps use different procedures?

Kathleen: You know, that's a great question. And that's a great example of where I'm not a hundred percent certain because the bomb dogs are the ones that are for sure food trained, but I believe the ATF also has some dual-purpose dogs, meaning those dogs have more than one job. So usually that includes apprehension. For a bomb dog, it could involve tracking.

And so those dogs might actually be trained differently. Usually, the apprehension dogs are trained based on their prey drive and that sort of thing. So that's a great example of figuring out what you want your dog to do, and then reaching out and seeing if you can connect with someone.

Matty: So, you had kindly sent me a list of some of the mistakes writers make that we're going to be talking about.

Can a dog track across water?

Matty: And the first one was a question I had asked you about during our conversation for "What I Learned," and that was: Can a fugitive cross a creek and have the dog not be able to follow them because the water masks the scent?

Kathleen: Yes, this is a good one. I'm going to pick on Hollywood because you see this all the time in movies where a fugitive runs down a creek bed and the dogs can't find them. That's absolutely not true. Dogs can track amazingly well through water. Our trainer once told me about a bloodhound he had in training. They were running a practice track and he instructed the person to run straight down the creek bed for maybe an eighth of a mile. It wasn't a huge distance, but it was significant. Then the person exited on the other side, and the dog followed the track perfectly.

He went in right where the person entered, followed down the creek bed, and interestingly, the dog dipped his nose into the water, scenting down in there before coming back up and exiting the creek right where the person did. So that was really amazing. It's definitely a myth that dogs can't track through water. In fact, there are cadaver dogs, or as I call them, human remains dogs, which we discussed a bit in "Killer Secrets." Some of these dogs are certified for water recovery. If there is a victim who has drowned, the dog will go out on a boat, lean over the side, and alert when they detect the person's scent. Divers then know roughly where to dive and recover the remains. It's amazing that dogs can detect scents through water and even from deep in a lake. So, that's definitely a myth.

Can a dog track a person in a car?

Matty: Yeah, the other thing that reminds me of, which makes sense to me, but I'm curious about your perspective on, is whether a dog can follow a scent to a certain point where it then disappears because the person got in a car and drove away. Is that true? In that case, would a scent trail just end suddenly or would it kind of peter out? How does that work?

Kathleen: That is another great question because I actually asked our trainer about that. You do hear about cases where the dog tracked to a point, then the person got in a vehicle, they left, and the track was over. Our trainer, who also worked as a deputy and a canine handler, told me that for a long time they just never trained the dogs to keep following that track.

So the dog would think, "Okay, this is what I'm trained to do. I get to the end of the track. There's the end." They're starting to realize they need to actually add into the training that the dog should continue following the track from a vehicle. So, it's not that they can't do it; it's more a matter of training. Bloodhounds, for example, would receive more of this type of training. They track for miles and miles. Their big floppy ears, when they put their nose down, help push the scent up into their noses, and their wrinkles hold the scent, allowing them to track for miles. I once read about a bloodhound that tracked for 130 miles following a kidnapping victim who had been picked up and driven away. They're certainly very capable of doing it. It's just a matter of ensuring the training supports it, and I believe that has changed. You're going to see more of that where dogs do follow tracks.

Matty: It does seem as if, at least, it would make sense to me, from a completely novice point of view, that the dog would reach the point where the person got into a vehicle, and then at least somehow indicate what direction the vehicle went in. You can imagine there would be all sorts of interesting tension to be built up on that. Now the investigator knows they headed west afterwards, and whether that's true or not true, knowing that's a possibility opens up some fun options.

What makes it difficult for a dog to track?

Kathleen: It does. It definitely does. Environmental factors, mostly wind, can make it hard for a dog to maintain a track. For instance, if a person is walking along a road, the scent might be blown onto the shoulder, making it harder for the dog to track accurately.

Another challenge is tracking in urban environments with heavy traffic. The airflow from vehicles can swirl around, scattering the scent and making it difficult for the dog to maintain the track. However, a good trainer will train dogs in these tough conditions so that they learn to sort through these challenges. They really are amazing. I've worked my dogs in windy conditions around vehicles to see if there's narcotics, and despite concerns about the wind direction, the dogs have always been spot on because we train in those situations. As a handler, you learn how to work through these challenges.

Another reason dogs might lose a track is if a lot of people walk over it, especially if the dogs are trained to find the hottest scent. For example, if someone unknown robbed a store and fled, the dog could track the most recent scent. As long as there isn’t a lot of foot traffic over the scent, the dog can successfully track it. I've heard stories of dogs tracking right to criminals' front doors.

Matty: So, that's what's fun about it when it comes to our books. We can add in as much conflict or make it as easy as we want, depending on what we need to happen in the story.

Kathleen: Exactly.

Matty: The whole idea that people are shown presenting some kind of article of clothing or something that belonged to the person they're trying to track, is that in fact how it works?

Kathleen: Yes, that's another method of tracking, called using a scent article. If, for example, someone was hiking in the mountains and didn't return, a jacket from their car might be used as a scent article to guide the dogs. You can keep having the dogs smell the scent article, and they can continue tracking it. There are essentially two different methods of tracking. In my books, I chose to make my fictional dog capable of both methods. In real life, most police agencies will have the dogs track the hottest scent, while most search and rescue teams will use a scent article. But for fiction and book purposes, I liked incorporating both methods. I even consulted a canine trainer from one of our local agencies, and he mentioned that he has used both methods with his law enforcement dogs, depending on the dog.

Training Rescue and Human Remains Dogs

Matty: It's interesting you were talking earlier about human remains dogs. I've always been curious about whether these dogs, if they were sent to an earthquake zone or a similar disaster area and it was assumed to be a recovery effort, would respond if they encountered a person still alive. Do the dogs react to that at all?

Kathleen: That's a great question. I believe they would. Many of those dogs, such as FEMA dogs, are trained to detect both live scents—people who are still alive—and deceased individuals. They train the dogs this way because the goal is to find everyone, and certainly, finding someone who's still alive is an amazing outcome.

A lot of the true cadaver dogs, or human remains dogs, vary depending on the agency. I was discussing this with my friend who helps me with "Killer Secrets," and she mentioned that it also depends on whether they are being used for law enforcement purposes, where you might have to testify in court. In those cases, they try to keep the dogs primarily trained to find just human remains.

That being said, I think the dogs know what they are tracking and what they are trying to find. It's certainly a possibility that they could detect live humans as well during their searches. I wouldn't rule it out. But definitely, the rescue recovery dogs—those working in situations like 9/11 or any FEMA operation—are trained to detect both live people and deceased remains.

Matty: And do you know how they train cadaver dogs?

Kathleen: I do. It varies. Our trainer in Oklahoma told me about his experiences. He used to go to the local hospital, where they knew he was a dog trainer. He would tell them what he needed, and they would give him items like bloody gauze or even some fingers and other things like that.

He mentioned once driving home, thinking about everything he had in his trunk, and realizing he would have a lot of explaining to do if he got pulled over.

Matty: That right there is a story. If anyone's searching for a story to write, there you go.

Kathleen: It is. It's part of what prompted "Killer Secrets," that story. But nowadays, things are different. He was probably training around 15-20 years ago when hospitals weren't so regulated.

Now, my understanding is you have to put in a special request. There are labs where you can get human remains like bone, tissue, blood—anything you're trying to teach the dog to find. When we pass away, our scent changes, so the remains will smell different whether we're alive or deceased. They need tissue from someone who is deceased, bones from someone who is deceased. You can apply for a special permit or regulation, get the materials, and then, you apparently need a separate freezer. Of course, you would want a separate freezer; you don't want that with your other stuff, but it's locked and marked specifically.

Matty: Yeah, and I realize it's not really like you could use roadkill or something like that, because you don't want to train the dog to find every dead chipmunk that happens to be in the bushes to the side of the path; it has to be very specific.

Kathleen: It does, and those would have a different odor. So, yes, you want to be sure they test. I would think when they certify, they're going to put out the human remains that the dog should be finding, and then maybe some things like roadkill, to make sure the dog is alerting on the correct thing. You could be affecting a case, a search and rescue operation, or a recovery operation.

So, those dogs really do have to be spot on.

Training the Alert Signal

Matty: When a dog alerts, is it the case that the trainer trains the dog to do a certain thing, or is it the trainer watching for a signal that's specific to that dog and just recognizing that that's the dog's way of alerting?

Kathleen: Great question. When the dogs are trying to find something, let's say drugs, their body language will change as they start catching an odor. This is true whether they're tracking a criminal, a human remains dog, or any other type of dog. We say they're "in odor." Their body language changes; they become more tense, their tails go up. It's something you have to get to know with each dog, but I can tell when my dogs are sniffing another dog or when they've found the scent of marijuana.

From there, once the dog is trained, you teach them how you want them to indicate. There are two types of alerts: passive and active. A passive alert could be the dog sitting or laying down. An active alert is where the dog will scratch. More and more, I don't see as many agencies using active alert dogs because it destroys evidence. We had some active alert dogs that left scratches on vehicles. Most of the time we found something, and it was like, "Well, you shouldn't have had marijuana at school, so you have to live with the scratches." But there was one time we didn't find anything, and we ended up paying for that car to be buffed out and repainted because the little dog who did that was quite an intense little lab and left quite a few scratches.

So, most of the time, my dogs are all passive alert now, especially in law enforcement, to make sure they're not scratching and messing up evidence. One of our trainers, who worked for the Colorado County Department and was a deputy, had her dog lay down to indicate he found evidence and sit to indicate he found narcotics. I thought that was just so amazing, so I stole that and put it in my book. The credit goes to her and her training because that was something I didn't know she did. I should ask her sometime.

Matty: How do you go about training the dog to recognize what you want them to be alerting on? For example, for drugs, are canines just trained for drugs generally or for a specific type of drug? I would think early on they would be excited about almost everything.

Kathleen: Yes, when you start training a young dog, there's always a phase where they get excited about everything and want their toys. They think, "Oh, I'll just alert here and maybe I'll get it."

Identifying Candidate Dogs

Kathleen: But to back up, we look for certain characteristics before we even start training. Those characteristics are extremely high energy. I always laugh when I test dogs that are supposed to be high energy, and I'm like, no, your dog is not high energy. Fetching the ball twice isn't good enough. We need a dog who will fetch it 20 times, or just hold the ball and catch their breath before you throw it for them again. That's the kind of dog we're looking for. They have to be comfortable with different floor surfaces and willing to get up on things like couches or tables. I'm sure when I tested different rescues, the people working there didn't like it because I'd be asking, "Are you willing to get up on this couch? Will you put your paws up on the table?" But we need them to be comfortable with that.

Once I know they will pass all those tests, I see if they have a high retrieve drive, if they are obsessed with their toy, and then I start teaching them that finding a specific odor means their toy will be there. For example, I might take some marijuana because it's a stinky odor and easy for them to start with. I associate the toy with the odor, making it easy at first: "Hey, go find it. Oh, there’s your toy right there." Then I gradually make it more challenging. They have to track the scent up high, down low, in grass, and in the wind—different environments until they learn to use their nose effectively.

Once they get that part down, then I start teaching them the indication, like they have to sit before getting their toy. I laugh because my older yellow lab, Willow, throughout her career, would act as if she was saying, "I know where it is. Just give me my toy." Legally, we need them to sit and indicate, which I always had to work on with her. At school, she’d sniff, look at me, and roll her eyes as if to say, "Fine, I’ll sit."

Matty: Be that way.

Kathleen: Exactly, she was the only one over the years who ever really thought that process through. It was really interesting. I even had her hips checked to make sure she wasn't sore, but no, she just knew she found it and should get her toy.

Matty: She was negotiating.

Kathleen: She was very much a negotiator. So that's an overview of the training process. There are a lot of different things involved, but that's the gist of it.

When Does Training Start?

Matty: And how old is a dog normally? Like, when would you start training a dog? And at what point would you feel like now, yes, this is a dog who can operate productively in a real-life scenario?

Kathleen: Yeah, so we always looked for them when they were about a year old, because by then their personalities and behavior are pretty much in place. If they have a high retrieve drive, they're probably always going to have a high retrieve drive. I went to a lot of rescues, because I always felt like those dogs ended up in a rescue because they're very difficult to live with.

So I'm laughing because I'm like, yeah, we have rules in our house because they are not easy to live with. But I have heard, for example, Boulder County Sheriff received a bloodhound puppy as a donation and they started him young. He just certified, I think he's a year and a half old now, and he just finished his certification. It sounds like his handler did lots of little games with him through puppyhood, but you don't always know if they're going to keep the characteristics you need. Some of them actually lose that retrieve drive. They calm down. You know, you always hear people say, "Oh, he's still acting like a puppy, but now he calmed down." Well, we don't want ours to calm down.

Matty: So do you not want them to calm down because they might be in a situation where they're going to need to keep going for a long time? Or is the fact of them being that energetic indicative of some deeper characteristic that's desirable for dogs doing this work?

Kathleen: Yeah, it's a little bit of both. It's the drive. It's when they're that energetic, they have really good drive. They have that prey drive. They just want to go out there and work, work, work, and do something. It is also indicative of how long they're going to be able to work. Now, that being said, even the most high-energy dogs are going to need a break. As their handler, you get to know them and you have to respect their limitations. But, I had a dog named Gracie, and she would just be working for an hour. I'd be like, "You need a break." And she'd look at me like, "No, I don’t." I'd make her take a 10-minute break.

And then she was right back out there like, "Okay." Most dogs aren't quite like that; she was a bit of an exception to the rule. Most of the dogs, you know, need breaks after 20, 30 minutes, at least for what we do, but yeah, you want that high prey drive.

Can One Scent Be Disguised with Another?

Matty: And, this is sort of looping back to an earlier point you made about using marijuana because it has a very distinctive odor. There's also this trope of packing drugs in coffee beans or something like that. Can you talk about that a bit? Is that a mistake writers make, or is it true?

Kathleen: You know, it is not true that you can hide it in coffee beans or anything like that. I always say, if you really want the dog to miss something, you need to pay off the handler. Because if you're writing a mystery and you want your dog to miss something, maybe the handler's not on the up and up, because we can mess up and pull them off a scent.

But dogs have an amazing olfactory system. When they smell, I always use the analogy: we walk into a pizza parlor, and we're like, "Oh, it smells like pizza." The dogs would walk in and be like, "Oh, I smell dough, flour, yeast," they smell all the ingredients in the dough individually. "I smell the sauce, I smell the cheese, I smell the pepperoni." So when you hide drugs in coffee, they would come up, smell the coffee, and be like, "I smell coffee. I smell meth. I'm going to alert." There's no way to cover up that odor. So that is a common myth.

It was really funny. We subscribed for years to a magazine called "High Times." There was an ad in there, and the reason we subscribed is we try to keep up on different stash containers because the dogs might alert and it's the human who misses it.

Kathleen: There are stash containers. "High Times" is an interesting magazine, and they had a lot of advertisements for different ways to stash drugs. We saw an ad once that said, "canine proof plastic bags." We thought, well, we got to order these. We have to see what's canine proof. So we ordered them and they came and my business partner and I were like, "This kind of just looks like Ziploc baggies, but let's see how canine proof they are."

We hid something in them and the dogs found it instantly. So, I hate to break it to anyone who bought those baggies and no, sorry "High Times," but they were not canine proof.

Matty: The distribution lists you must be on.

Kathleen: I know, I was like, I'm probably on some watch list. My husband always jokes that he hates going to the airport with me because I'm probably on some watch list.

Matty: Yeah,

Kathleen: Between the book research and the drug dogs, you know, he's certain.

How to Evade Tracking Dogs (Maybe)

Matty: Well, these questions about what can and can't throw a dog off a scent are interesting because I live in Chester County, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, and a while ago there was a guy who escaped from a person in the area. He evaded the police for, I think, like two weeks. They would catch him on trail cams and things like that. He was spending some time in Longwood Gardens, which is a huge botanical garden in the area, and they did have dogs trying to track him. I thought, "Oh well, the dogs are on the case now, like how long is he going to be out there?" but he was still out there for a really long time, and I never heard anything about what the explanation was for how that happened, but if someone is a fugitive and they're trying to avoid the tracking dogs, do you have any tips for them on how they can do that?

Kathleen: I would say I wouldn't go in a straight line. I would be weaving around a lot. Try to make that dog really work, having to keep up with you. Maybe going over fences and back over, and it's not that the dogs can't track it, but you're just making them work harder. If you go in a straight line, that's much easier. They're just like, "Oh yeah, I got you. I'll be on it." You could, I have to think about how to say this, so you could even go up in a tree or something like that. Now the dogs will still find you. Your scent molecules will drop down. You shed skin cells; those are going to drop down. But if you stayed there and then left again before the dogs came, your scent pool might just be there. And they might think, "Oh, they're up here." So I need to stop here. And then that handler needs to cast the dog out again and get back on the track. Sometimes as a handler, I can tell you, it's just trying to figure out where to start.

So if they didn't know exactly where he was, the trail cams probably helped. My guess is if they caught him on the trail cam, they would be like, "Okay, let's at least take the dog there. See what we have going." And my other question would be, not knowing the case or the dogs or anything like that, is if it's in an area, again, with a lot of foot traffic, that can mess things up, but maybe it wasn't.

Matty: Yeah, not in this case. I really hope that somebody writes a book about it because it was fascinating. They even had video of him, you know, in retrospect, when they realized he was gone, they looked back at the video. His name was Cavalcante. I can't remember his first name, but they had video of him.

He climbed up, there was a brick wall, and he put his hands on one wall and his feet on the other, and he kind of Spider-Man'd up between the walls and then got on the roof and somehow from the roof got over the fence. It cracked me up because I kind of hope somebody in a position of authority hears this, but the law enforcement officer who was directing the whole search and rescue thing kept saying, "You know, this guy isn't smart. He thinks he's smart, but he's not." And I'm like, "Dude, don't say that because you've been looking for him now for 10 days and haven't found him." So if he's not smart, that's probably not the message you want to be sending out to people about the people who are trying to track him down. But it was fascinating.

I do think that it was dogs that eventually did help. I mean, I know there was a dog on the case when they did finally, you know, he had fallen asleep after two weeks on the run, he had fallen asleep and they happened upon him while he was actually sleeping. But it was a fascinating story. I hope somebody delves into more detail about that.

Kathleen: That does sound fascinating. And now that you said he went up on roofs and stuff like that, that would be, that's about as good as you're going to get. To not get rid of the scent, but make it harder. You're making it a lot harder on the dogs to track that scent.

Matty: Yeah,

Kathleen: Yeah,

Matty: Yeah, I guess it would be, yeah, well, I'm waiting for the book to come out. Maybe I'll start writing it myself.

Kathleen: You should go for it. I want to read your book on it.

Matty: We've been talking a lot about labs, but oftentimes you hear shepherds or shepherd mixes being dogs that are doing this, but then you also see, like, beagles at the airport sniffing baggage on the baggage carousel.

So, how do people match the breed of dog with the type of work that they want them to do?

Kathleen: That's a great question. So you really have to think about the job you want. And so, for instance, in our case, a drug dog could be a shepherd, it could be a Malinois, it could be a lab. I had a Russell Terrier, who was one of the best drug dogs I ever had.

Matty: I can believe that. As a person with a terrier, I believe that.

Kathleen: Oh, he was fantastic. I called him my undercover agent.

Matching Dog Breeds to Work Roles

Kathleen: He had more drug busts, and I don't know, I feel like it was just because he was that exceptional, but sometimes, too, I think people didn't take him seriously. And so then maybe they didn't see it.

It's just a terrier. But it really comes down to, in our case, we're going into schools and businesses and we want to be non-intimidating. So we have the labs, we have the terriers we've used over the years because, again, if you saw Sparky, you're not intimidated by him.

He was my little terrier, Sparky. But if you brought in a dog like the Malinois behind me on my book cover, all of a sudden you're a little more at attention, right? You're like, "Oh, I better stand a little straighter." That's a little more intimidating. That dog might bite me. That dog might be trained to do something like that.

So, law enforcement often has the more intimidating breeds because they need that. Because when they find someone who's been on the run for two weeks, they need a dog that is going to convince someone just to say, "Okay, never mind." And they need a dog who, when they do bite, is going to help them get control and make a suspect become compliant, because you're not deploying a dog to bite or apprehend someone unless something's really going wrong. Your average arrest is not going to have a dog hanging off of someone's arm. So when you think about the scale of what police officers use as far as just being in uniform and their presence to all the way up to an officer-involved shooting, the dogs are actually pretty high up on that scale.

And if you're deploying a dog, that officer is in a really dangerous situation, and it's not something you normally do. So you need the really intimidating dogs who are quite happy to go out and bite someone and hang on to that bite and help until they can get a suspect in handcuffs and everyone's safe.

So breeds really vary. I mean, you know, little Sparky, he thought he was tough, but he's not going to go out and take down a big criminal. But a Malinois will. So that is definitely something to research. A lot of bomb dogs are labs. And I think it's because they're out in public places. You see them at the Super Bowl.

You see them at our baseball games or football games, with the professional sports and they're in with the public. You want them to be non-intimidating. TSA, I've seen them use pointers, I've seen them use labs. The Beagles come into play a lot of times at airports for food.

They're really good at finding food. They're not always the best drug dogs, which is interesting to me, but they love finding food. They're little food hounds. So you see them a lot at customs, and you see them finding things coming in. You know, the USDA has pretty strict regulations about what can come into our country from other countries. They're right there, checking everything, making sure everyone's on the up and up. So yeah.

What Happens If a Dog Flunks Out?

Matty: And how about what happens when a dog flunks out of a program? What would cause that? And then what happens to that animal?

Kathleen: So we've had a couple flunkouts over the years. The first one we had was a border collie mix. He was smart enough to say he would check like 10 lockers. And you have to understand when we go into a school, we're probably going to check 500 lockers. I mean, it depends on how often they alert, but if you're just going through, you're checking a lot.

So he would check like 10, 20 lockers and then just say, "If you lost it, you should find it." So his nose was great, his drive was great, he just was like, "I don't need to keep working for something you lost."

Matty: That's interesting.

Kathleen: Yeah, I mean, you think of border collies as being kind of obsessively driven to work more and more. And that's why we thought when we found him, "Oh, this is going to be a great dog. He's a lab-border collie mix. He's got that border collie drive, you know, he's going to be fantastic." Well, he wasn't. So we found a home for him. He actually ended up living with our dog massage therapist who works on all our dogs.

So maybe he was the smartest out of everyone because he got to go live with her and probably got massages all the time. So he'd probably tell my dogs, "See how much smarter I was." And then we've had some that just couldn't handle the environment of a school. You go into a middle school and you have kids who get really excited to see dogs.

The Role of the Handler

Kathleen: One of the things I focus on, particularly during community outreach, is teaching kids how to properly approach a dog. The kids get really excited, they see my dogs, and they come running up. And I'm like, "Well, just stop. Let me teach you how to properly approach a dog you don't know, especially a working dog." We do allow the kids to pet our dogs. But our dogs have to handle that situation, which can be a lot of stress, and not every dog can handle it. So, we had another one flunk out. He never got aggressive; he was just scared. And I don't blame him; I told him middle schoolers can be scary.

Matty: I agree with that.

Kathleen: So, we found a home for him, and he was quite happy just being a dog. They do flunk out once in a while, but we've been pretty lucky over the years that most of them have worked out.

Matty: It's always interesting to see, every once in a while, I'll run across an article about service dogs, like seeing-eye dogs who don't make the cut, fail the bunny test or whatever, and then are offered for adoption as a pet. And I think that's probably the best-behaved pet you could get, except maybe they know how to open the refrigerator or something like that.

Kathleen: They are. We've had some interesting experiences with retired dogs because when they're working, part of the reason they can't just live in the house like a pet is because I can't scold them if they get up on the couch or check the counter—that's part of their training. So it's funny, we'll have people over for the holidays or something, and the family has even learned. The first time a dog jumped up, put his front paws on the counter, someone was ready to correct him, and I said, "Oh, good job! Good checking!" And then I said, "Okay, now leave it and let's go outside."

Kathleen: Because, you know, we even caught little Sparky. He was so funny. We learned that when he was retired and loose in the house, we had to push the chairs in at our table. Otherwise, he knew how to jump up on the chair, then onto the table. My husband came in one day and caught him trotting around the table, cleaning up crumbs. And then he saw my husband and froze, like "you don't see me."

Matty: Oh, he knew he was being naughty.

Kathleen: He knew. We had been working with him on, "You don't do this anymore." But, you know, when he was working, we were at a middle school dance and the drinks had been spiked. I put them up on the table, and he went down the table indicating, "This drink, this drink." Because we train our dogs to find alcohol, which is important since we work in schools, and he was like, "This drink is spiked, and this one, and this one." So, he had done that throughout his career and thought, "Well, why should this change?"

Matty: It's funny. It would be difficult to have him at a cocktail party. He'd be wanting to turn everybody in.

Kathleen: It was.

Matty: I also want to ask about the human side of this. So, in your circumstance where you're going to schools with a dog looking for drugs or alcohol, what training do the people have? Not specific to the dogs, but to the people in the environment. So, if you're searching lockers and there's a group of middle school kids hanging around and the dog alerts at a locker, how do you handle that situation as you manage the dynamics with the other people there?

Kathleen: There are a lot of factors. One is the handler has to go through a lot of certification and training just to work the dog. The second part of that certification and training is understanding what you can and can't do regarding Fourth Amendment rights within the school setting. For example, if there were a group of kids around hanging around the lockers, and this is specific to a school setting, so if anyone's using this video for research, I would probably wait for those kids to leave or I would go somewhere else. The reason for that is our dogs do not alert on people because the Supreme Court ruled that having a dog sniff and alert on a person is the same as a strip search. While our dogs can smell it on someone, and they might, I always used to joke Sparky would be like, "You."

Kathleen: And I could tell the schools, "Well, if you feel like checking some pockets, that might be a good kid to check." But that's up to the school. That's not up to me. So if there's a group of kids or it's a passing period, I just hang out and try to be visible. If there's a class out doing an activity in the hallway, I might just say hello, be visible, because again, that presence is meant to deter drugs, alcohol, and gunpowder in schools.

They see us, they hopefully think, "Oh, the dog was here. We should make good choices." That's what I always tell them: "Let's make better choices." And then I'll go to another part of the school that doesn't have anyone there, that's empty, and check lockers. I often have an administrator with me.

Navigating Legalities in Dog Handling Operations

Kathleen: So, if we do classrooms, the administrator will ask the students to leave the classroom and then we go in and check their belongings. Parking lots are always interesting because if a student parks on school grounds, that parking lot belongs to the school. So the Supreme Court has ruled that basically, you're renting that spot. If I have the right to come out and check vehicles, I might do random checks. For example, if someone says, 'We suspect a black truck,' okay, well, hopefully there's more than one black truck. If not, I'll just go check all the trucks in the parking lot.

There are a lot of different scenarios you get yourself into that you have to know the Fourth Amendment rights. And then those are great questions to ask if you're doing book research, because again, every agency is different. For instance, at the airport, if I had something on my person, those dogs probably are, I'm going to just assume, I don't know this 100 percent for certain, but I'm sure Homeland Security overrides any sort of, and, and we're willingly there.

Unlike kids that are mandated to go to school, that was part of the Supreme Court's decision with the searches and not allowing a dog to sniff a kid out of school is because they're legally forced to be there. At an airport, it's our choice to be there, right? We're going on vacation or we're flying to a writer's conference, wherever, and that was our choice.

We bought the ticket. We're in the security line. Those dogs, if you have something on your person, they're gonna alert on you. And then you're going to be taken away and searched. So there's a lot of different scenarios. And so I encourage writers out there to learn more about the Fourth Amendment cases that have gone to the Supreme Court concerning dogs, because there's actually been a few, especially for law enforcement.

And can you use a dog, like, could they just show up with a canine and check around my house if they thought I had a drug lab? The Supreme Court said, no, you can't do that. But it's a fascinating thing to read.

So it is important. That would be a great research question, depending again on what agency you're using, what you want to have happen. Is this a legal search? Is this an illegal search? And, you could certainly do an illegal one as a plot point to, you know, have the case thrown out or have a canine handler get fired or whatever you want to do with that.

Matty: Yeah, if all our books were about everybody following the letter of the law, they would be pretty boring books.

Kathleen: They would be, yeah. So it is kind of fun to play with that.

How to Get More Information for Writing About Working Dogs

Matty: So if someone is interested in researching this for their own book, are there any suggestions you have for how to go about this? Like, I always wanted to be the person that hid in the woods so that the dog could come look for me. I don't know if there's some qualification you need to be the person who goes and hides in the woods or gets buried under the snow or whatever.

Kathleen: Sure. What I would do is, first, figure out what agency you want, then go to their public information officer, assuming it's a law enforcement agency. If it's a private agency like ours, you can just reach out to me. I would go to the public information officer and say, "This is what I'm writing, is there a canine handler willing to talk to me?" Usually, canine handlers love talking about our dogs. We're so proud of our dogs and love telling stories. The only time I heard of a writer having any kind of a hard time finding a connection was TSA with the airports, and that probably just has to do with security. But when it comes to that, you could probably just get some basic dog information and use it if that's the agency you want to use in your book.

I'm also happy to help. On my website, KathleenDonnelly.com, people are welcome to reach out. I don't know everything about every type of working dog, but I could at least help someone get started. So if someone really was stuck, I would be happy to try to help them, but public information officers are great, and they can usually connect you with canine handlers, and it's a great way. In fact, I have a wonderful person I use for my books because my protagonist is a Forest Service law enforcement officer and canine handler, and it took me a while to find a real canine handler in a forest service, and it was through their public information office that I was able to connect with him.

Matty: So great. Well, Kathleen, thank you so much. I could talk about dogs for hours, but I appreciate the information you shared and please let everyone know where they can go to find out not only to contact you, to find out more about you and your books and everything you do online.

Kathleen: Thanks so much. The website is a great place to start. I also have a monthly newsletter and the signup is on the website. If you sign up, you get my free ebook called "Working Tales: The Stories Behind the Canines." I'm on social media, mostly Facebook and Instagram are great ways to connect. But otherwise, my newsletter and my website are fantastic.

Matty: Very good. Thank you so much.

Kathleen: Yeah, thank you!

Matty Dalrymple 5/28/24 Matty Dalrymple 5/28/24

Episode 240 - The Sales Flywheel with Chelle Honiker

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Chelle Honiker discusses THE SALES FLYWHEEL, including what a sales flywheel is ... and what it is not; building a community through the flywheel; finding the nugget of humanity; the danger of teaching readers to expect free; sharing of yourself, but within parameters you set; building cyclical, not transactional, relationships; the importance of not emailing people only when you have something to sell them; and the flywheel approach to book launches.

Chelle Honiker is an advocate for the empowerment of authorpreneurs, recognizing the importance of authors taking charge of both their craft and careers. She is the co-founder and publisher of Indie Author Magazine, IndieAuthorTraining, Indie Author Tools, and Direct2Readers.com; the programming director for the Author Nation conference; and a TEDx Organizer.

Episode Links

https://indieauthormagazine.com
https://facebook.com/indieauthormag
https://twitter.com/indieauthorzine
https://instagram.com/indieauthormagazine
https://www.linkedin.com/company/indieauthormagazine
https://www.youtube.com/@indieauthormagazine

Summary

Introduction to Chelle Honiker
In this episode of "The Indy Author Podcast," host Matty Dalrymple introduces Chelle Honiker, an advocate for entrepreneur empowerment and co-founder of several platforms aimed at supporting indie authors, including "Indie Author Magazine" and "Indy Author Training." Chelle's work focuses on helping authors take control of their careers through community building and strategic marketing.

Concept of the Sales Flywheel vs. Sales Funnel
Chelle discusses the transition from the traditional sales funnel to the sales flywheel. Unlike the funnel that tends to drop customers after a purchase, the flywheel promotes ongoing engagement by creating multiple touchpoints. This model encourages continuous interaction through newsletters, websites, and merchandise, enhancing the customer relationship rather than focusing solely on transactions.

Community and Collaboration
The conversation shifts towards the importance of community within the indie author ecosystem. Chelle highlights the benefits of collaboration, such as sharing newsletters and participating in anthologies with other authors. This approach keeps readers engaged and strengthens the community, moving away from the transactional nature of traditional sales funnels.

Human Element in Marketing
Chelle emphasizes the importance of personal connection in the digital age, especially post-pandemic. With the rise of video content and generative AI, there is a significant focus on maintaining the human aspect of storytelling and marketing, ensuring that technology enhances rather than replaces personal connections.

Challenges of Free Content
The dialogue also covers the challenges associated with offering free content. Chelle argues that while freebies are common to attract new readers, they can inadvertently teach customers to expect free products, potentially devaluing the work. Instead, she suggests assigning minimal costs to content to maintain its perceived value.

Social Media and Direct Engagement
The discussion addresses the evolving role of social media and the necessity for authors to build and control their own platforms. By fostering direct relationships with readers and reducing reliance on third-party platforms, authors can better protect their data and maintain engagement.

The Power of Collaboration
Chelle talks about the power of collaboration within the indie author community. By partnering with other authors and sharing audiences, indie authors can create a more robust and supportive network. This cooperative approach contrasts with traditional competitive market strategies, emphasizing shared success over individual gains.

Listening and Adapting to Audience Needs
The podcast covers how authors can listen to their community to adapt their marketing strategies effectively. Using analytics tools and engaging with audience feedback, authors can refine their approaches to meet readers' needs better, ensuring the flywheel continues to spin effectively.

Conclusion
In closing, Chelle invites listeners to explore more about her work through "Indie Author Magazine" and upcoming industry conferences. The podcast encapsulates the essence of the indie author movement—fostering a collaborative, engaged, and adaptable approach to authorship and marketing in the modern digital landscape.

Overall, the podcast serves as a comprehensive guide for indie authors seeking to leverage the sales flywheel concept to build lasting relationships with their readers, emphasizing the importance of community, ongoing engagement, and the human element in all aspects of authorship and marketing.Transcript

Transcript

Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Chelle Honiker. Hey, Chelle, how are you doing?

Chelle: Hey Matty, I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Matty: I am pleased to have you here.

Meet Chelle Honiker

Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background, Chelle Honiker is an advocate for the empowerment of entrepreneurs, recognizing the importance of authors taking charge of their craft and careers. She's the co-founder and publisher of "Indie Author Magazine," "Indy Author Training," "Indy Author Tools," and DirectToReaders.com, the programming director for the Author Nation Conference, and a TEDx organizer. And I was recently listening to an episode of the "Author Nation State of the Nation" podcast, and I heard Chelle mention the topic of the sales flywheel. I was so intrigued by that idea that I invited her on the podcast to talk more about it.

What is the sales flywheel... and what is it not?

Chelle: What is it, and what is it not? Okay, so in the concept of marketing, we've traditionally been taught that there is a sales funnel, meaning you start at the top and you bring a bunch of people in, then you move them through a funnel until you get to an eventual sale. Traditionally, you start them over again, and you start more top of funnel activities, offering them maybe free things, then you move them to the middle of the funnel, where you try to sell them something or go deeper in the relationship until you get to the bottom of the funnel, which is an eventual sale.

What my thinking is, and what I have seen tremendously on the rise in this industry, is the advent of what's called a flywheel. A flywheel means that you have different touch points. Think of it as a circle; you have different touch points, and you might touch someone with a newsletter or a website or something, and you keep moving them around in a circle so that you have a continuous conversation with them, rather than trying to get them to a zero-sum sale every single time.

Chelle: So the importance of that is that you're continuing the conversation and you're deepening the relationship with them. You're asking them questions, you might give them polls, you might offer them some version of Patreon or Kickstarter, you might have some merch, so you're basically just keeping them in your ecosystem and you're talking to them on a continuous basis rather than just cycling them through a sales process.

Building a community through the flywheel

Chelle: I've also expanded that a bit now as I've thought about it more to include not just you participating in the sales flywheel, but also other people in your ecosystem. For example, if you think of a satisfied reader as your goal, you can offer them other books. You might have other authors that are part of that sales flywheel that you collaborate with, or with whom you have anthologies, or that you swap newsletters with, so that you're continuously keeping that satisfied reader engaged, rather than funneling through a sales cycle every single time.

And you don't really need to start over; you just continue the conversation with them.

Matty: It does feel more comfortable in the sense that a funnel suggests—and I don't think I thought about this until I heard the alternative of the flywheel—it feels like dropping people off based on a perceived sense of their value.

Chelle: Yeah, their worth, right?

Matty: Their worth, yeah, exactly. It felt uncomfortable, and I think that the way you're describing it, there's a sort of more community-oriented approach. Interestingly, both with the people you're trying to reach as readers and, as you're saying, through the authors, it's just a more comfortable way of thinking about it.

Finding the nugget of humanity

Chelle: It's a more comfortable way of thinking about it, and it's more, I think, especially with this generation, they're used to having conversations and more personal connections with folks. While email still remains incredibly important, there's also video that people are accustomed to now. They're used to seeing authors and storytellers in a much more relatable way, as opposed to just blasting; we used to call it spray and pray, right?

And back in the marketing days, we would spray out an offer, spray out a message, and you would pray somebody would come back and buy something. Those days are kind of over, I think, because people are more sophisticated, and because now, especially with the advent of technology during the pandemic, we all sort of had to find a little more nugget of humanity and more ways to relate to one another.

I also think that with the advent of generative AI, that is going to be the salvation for the storytellers who want to continue and have successful careers, because nothing can replace that humanity. If you have a connection with your reader, if you have a connection with your listener or your viewer, if you're setting them up with video, generative AI is not going to replace that.

Chelle: It's not going to replace the heart and the humanity of the person-to-person connection. It's just not. And I have great hope for the things that AI will be able to help us with to get rid of some of the busy work and the junk so that we can get back to connecting with our readers and our fans. We can connect with our stories and make sure that we're doing the thing that we love, which is telling stories.

The danger of teaching readers to expect free

Matty: Yeah. You had mentioned freebies as an important part of the sales funnel that everybody's advised to offer—a free story or novella—in order to get people on their email list. What kind of role do you think giving away content plays when you're looking at a sales flywheel instead of a sales funnel?

Chelle: So I think, I have always felt that was a tricky endeavor, because you're teaching your reader to expect free. You're basically saying, here it is for free, you're devaluing it. I don't think readers realize that our initial thought was by offering a reader magnet, a lead magnet, those things for free, we were getting them hooked. But because they're inundated with so much, we've just trained them to expect things for free now.

And I think that's backfired in a certain way for us. You know, there are different genres that have different successes, so I think it's very different for each individual author as to how they incorporate some of that. But for me and for our marketing mix, we tend to do that a little more sparingly because it's a race to the bottom, and it devalues your work immediately. So even if you offer it for 99 cents, you're still assigning a value to it, and you're still teaching your reader to value your work. And I think ultimately, that's really been one of the most important hurdles that we as indies have faced because self-published has always been equated with vanity press rather than as a marketing strategy.

And I hope that we can start to reframe that conversation so that 'indie' now means taking charge of your career as opposed to just being self-published. So an indie author could be hybrid. An indie author could be traditionally published in my world. It just literally means that you are building a business and building relationships with your readers.

So I have mixed ideas on that. I mean, coming back to the idea of the flywheel, if you do a free newsletter swap and you get all those people in there, the way our email systems are set up—because we pay for every subscriber that's on our email list—we're often taught to shed people who don't open or engage, or do something. When in fact, we might think about how we engaged with them in the first place and how can we bring them deeper into the conversation or offer them something that's a little more of value.

For example, authors could offer to show up to book clubs if they're reading their book. You can offer a little bit more of yourself, which I know is very scary, right? There are a lot of us who are introverts and a lot of us just want to write books or just want to tell stories. I get that, but I think that we're overlooking an opportunity that we might not have thought of by connecting more deeply, connecting outside of social media networks, even.

The changing role of social media

Chelle: I think social media is going to change a lot as well.

I think we're going to have to rely less on social media and more on owning our own ecosystems, our own groups, our own direct sales, our own relationships. The data of our customers will be our intellectual property that we need to protect a bit more. So, I think we need to do more business shifting and start thinking about our businesses and not be so dependent on freebies or even retailers, right?

I think those are conversations that we need to have. I think that's sort of the future of publishing—owning our own distribution network and owning our own relationships with our customers in a slightly different way.

The power of collaboration

Chelle: That also means there are opportunities to collaborate with people because we don't have a zero-sum game of selling a single widget or selling a single book. We have the opportunity to satisfy a reader as the end result, and we can partner with people we trust and other authors we trust to keep that satisfied reader happy and in that ecosystem, and keep touching them on that flywheel. It's a subtle shift, but I think it's a necessary one.

I think it's going to be something we really need to think about as we move forward because there are things that are changing, and we are, to some extent, at the mercy of some retailers. And they are great partners; don't get me wrong. They've opened up doors and they've built careers. But if they decided not to give us commission, if they decided to shut down anything, there would be many of us who would be in deep trouble because we don't have a way to contact our customers directly, which is why newsletters have always been so important. In my world, they're vastly important because you need to have a way to connect with your customers.

If Facebook shut down the ability for us to have groups, which they've already done with some features—we're not able to go live in groups anymore—we need to be able to control how we connect with our readers. That's probably the scariest part of all.

Matty: There were two things I wanted to delve into. One is that I think this idea that there's more value in the relationship between a creator and the people who are accepting their creations is compelling. I had talked about this a little bit with Jennifer Holt and Megan Haskell. We did an episode on Kickstarter, and we were talking about how there are readers out there who are browsing for their books on Kickstarter because they like that idea of not just picking a book off a shelf or a virtual shelf; they like the idea of having some kind of connection with the authors. And I think that's very appealing to authors.

And then, kind of contradictory to that is this idea that you have to sort of be more putting yourself out there more if you're pursuing a sales flywheel versus a sales funnel approach. Do those feel contradictory to you, or do you have advice about how people can get over any part of that feels uncomfortable to them?

Sharing of yourself, but within parameters you set

Chelle: I mean, there are ways to... I think one of the things in social media is that we think that we're seeing an entire video of someone when actually we're just seeing the highlights. And so, everybody can choose what to put out there and what to say and how to say it. You don't have to give 110 percent of yourself all of the time.

You don't have to show your children's faces. You don't have to show your husband's face. You don't even have to, you could use initials, right? So, there are ways to keep some of that anonymity for yourself. And you have to choose whatever level of comfort you have with that. But I will say that some of the more successful authors that I see, for example, Lucy Score—she has a fantastic newsletter where she talks about things in a very humorous way.

And I devour her newsletters, just because they're so entertaining. The fact that she sells a book is almost ancillary to the whole reason why I read her newsletter. I like to hear about her shenanigans. And the other thing that she does at the bottom of them is she promotes good news. Those have nothing to do with her personally.

She's just created a vibe, if you will. She's created a network of positivity and engagement and lighthearted things. So she'll say, you know, here's something that happened that was really good. Here's a dog that was rescued, or, you know, there's really good things happening in the world, and she is perpetuating that without... She wouldn't have to do all of the things that she does, and no one should have to feel like they're sacrificing themselves on the altar of their readers. But there are ways that you can connect and create a persona that is very viable and engaging and worthy of it.

One of the things that we've done at "Indie Author Magazine" is we created an avatar. Her name is Indy Annie, and all of our newsletters come from her. We've created her as a slightly drunk agony aunt that gives advice, and she's an amalgam of all of us. There is someone that actually writes the advice columns, but her articles and her advice letters are hilarious, and they're so much fun. But we've chosen to make all of our newsletters come from her, so you know, there are ways to do that.

I know there are other authors that have personas, right? They have, I have a friend who writes mystery thrillers, and she has a hat over her eyes, and it's a bit mysterious, so she doesn't show her face. I have another who writes cozy mysteries, and she has a cute little spyglass over her face, and it's an avatar, so there are ways to do that.

You don't have to put yourself completely out there, and again, you don't have to be a Kardashian and overshare absolutely everything. But I think the opportunity is that indie authors don't have PR staff and don't have publicity teams and don't have gatekeepers. You have the ability to connect directly with your readers. So you can show them the highlight reel. You don't have to show them the behind-the-scenes.

Building cyclical, not transactional, relationships

Matty: It does seem like another key difference between a sales funnel and a sales flywheel is this idea that the funnel feels transactional, whereas the flywheel, not surprisingly, feels cyclical. Wheel, cyclical. How would you recommend that authors internalize that in their own reader outreach processes? Like, are there steps people should take, or red flags they should watch out for, that would point them in one direction or the other? Oh, you're going to have a better result, you're going to develop a better relationship with your readers if you approach it in a less transactional way. Do you have any tips there?

Don't just email people when you have something to sell them

Chelle: Yeah, so I think the biggest tip is don't just email people when you have something to sell them. And that's probably the biggest mistake. I try not to be prescriptive and say do this and not do this, but I can say that I see more success when people continue to have conversations. For example, if you're sharing recipes and just giving generously, not saying, "Here's a countdown timer and here's my book and it's coming, and it's coming," and having these transactional emails that lead up to it, that's priming the pump and people know when they're being sold to.

The difference is not subtle. If I'm being honest, I can see a subject line and know immediately if it's somebody interesting and engaging versus just priming the pump and getting me ready to sell something. If it says "countdown" or if it says "open now" or if there's a sense of urgency, we tend to listen to a lot of marketers, and marketing advice is great.

But I think the shift now is getting—not necessarily away from the commerce because that's important—but also focusing and prioritizing the relationship with your reader, asking good questions, giving them the opportunity to weigh in on things, talking to them on Kickstarter or other places, making one of the levels about killing off a character or saving a character. You don't have to write by committee, but there is something to be said for keeping them engaged and keeping them interested in the ecosystem and in the sphere that you have.

So, I would say, try to just analyze it and have people look at it. And if you find yourself only emailing your readers when a new release is coming, there might be a different way that you can engage.

The flywheel approach to book launches

Matty: It makes me think of a topic that I would not have expected to bring up in a flywheel versus funnel conversation, but that is book launches. I found that for the last couple of launches of my books—since I'm publishing a book maybe every nine to twelve months—by the time it's ready, I'm already onto the next book. And I became sort of fed up with launch parties and things like that. My last couple of launches were like, "Hey, I have a new book." And I realized that that was probably not the best way to do it. But as an indie author, I also feel like the real value of my books is in the backlist.

And I don't bank a lot on the backlist, so an underwhelming launch wasn't going to be a big impact for me. But do you think that there's an aspect of an indie author promoting their backlist that is better served by using a flywheel approach than using a funnel approach?

Chelle: I think, sure, especially depending on your genre, because you can thread in conversations from your backlist and maybe do a character study or maybe introduce a character or maybe have a short conversation in your newsletter about it or on social media. So you can remind people of interesting things that they have said without beating them over the head with "This is also for sale." And I think that's the difference too, is we have this run-up to a launch and so many times launch parties are meant to, I think the intent was to celebrate the launch when really it just means for the authors who are doing it, they're just beating their readers over the head with something new and they don't realize that it's not a celebration anymore.

And I think, you know, as indies, we are responsible for pushing it, but there's no doubt about that. There's no one that's going to push your book. You don't have a publisher that's going to launch a full-court press for you anymore. This is our responsibility and it's our opportunity to do that.

But again, I think if we look at the language and we start to think about how we can continue a conversation with them, bring in interesting things to engage and ask questions, satisfy them, bring in other authors and collaborate and do different things to make them feel special and included rather than transactional. I think it's going to make all the difference in the world.

Matty: Yeah, I'm realizing that one thing that had drifted off my radar screen was the idea that a launch celebration is supposed to be a celebration; it's not supposed to be a sales event. And I really like that idea. It would definitely be more comfortable for me to think about in what way do I want to celebrate the availability of this new book with the people who... And maybe attract the attention of people who don't follow me yet. That could be part of it too. But think, you know, I'm going to go on a Facebook Live with a glass of wine and I'm going to chat with people for an hour. It's a much more fun and less stressful way of thinking about it than some of the things that I see people doing for launches.

And I guess the other part of that, which kind of goes back to the cyclical idea of the flywheel, is that it's much more comfortable for me. So I have a book that's based on, its backstory is a big fire that took place in Maine in 1947, the fire of '47 in Bar Harbor. And so every October, I pull up, I find some video clips or something like that about the fire, which was a fascinating event.

And I post them. And I say, if you want to learn more, you know, I have a book with this backstory, which is much more comfortable for me and feels more organic than, than a big splashy launch for that book when it first comes out and then kind of letting it sit aside. So I think that there's a lot of nice comfort there to be had from the organicness and the non-transactional nature of this kind of relationship, this kind of flywheel relationship.

Pursuing out-of-the-box ideas for engaging readers

Chelle: Yeah, we also did a webinar the other day that talked about out-of-the-box thinking, and one of the things we talked about is, you know, if you write fantasy, instead of trying to do this big social media push, why not partner with a Renaissance fair? Why not have some of your characters cosplay and show up at the Renaissance fair, and get people to learn and know about your story and your world and bring them into your world? Instead of saying, "Here is a book I have for sale. Come read it," get them engaged in it. That's sort of one of the interesting things that we talk about in the "Future of Publishing" issue too, is the advent of transmedia, which is, you've got folks that learn about your world from alternate sources. A good example of that is "The Witcher," because it started out as a game, and no one knew that there was a book. And then there was a Netflix series, and no one knew there was a game. And so that's an example of bringing people in, and then, you know, taking them deeper or figuring out how they can learn more about your world and bring them into your fandom.

So, you know, there's lots and lots of ways to do that in very small ways, right? So you could offer a cookbook for sale, that's connected to your cozy mystery. The cookbook almost has nothing to do with it, but you know, learning about who wrote the cookbook, you know, it was a grandmother that wrote the cookbook or there's a ghost that wrote the cookbook. I don't know. Somebody wrote the cookbook, but it's tied to your story. So you've got different ways that you can make it interesting and engaging and do it out-of-the-box rather than, you know, slogging up Launch Mountain, which I think some of us just get so, it's exhausting. It really is.

So if there's a way that you can think out-of-the-box and come back to and make it fun for yourself too, how much more do you resonate with someone who's enthusiastic and engaged and excited about what they're doing? And, oh, hey, they have something for sale as opposed to, you know, feeling like you're getting beaten over the head with a credit card machine.

It's just a more organic way for you to feel better about it as an author and for them to feel better about it as a reader and to keep that connection a little bit more solid. Yeah.

Matty: I think that is an area where indie authors definitely have an edge on traditional publishers because traditional publishers are all about the launch, and I think they neglect the backlist. And I see some traditionally published authors that I follow on social media and it's like, "Oh God, I just can't look at another 'coming in a week, coming in six days, coming in five days.'"

Chelle: And it's also not their writing. It's not them writing it. It's some social media... you know, and there's nothing wrong with help. Believe me, there's nothing wrong with having people manage your social media for you or do something. But it's, again, it's that faceless transaction as opposed to how exciting it is when the author goes on there?

I live for Neil Gaiman's tweets. I live for them. He's engaging and he's charming and he answers people. And, you know, I said something one day about one of the audiobooks I love, "The Graveyard Book," which I absolutely adore, and he answered me and I was like, "I'm going to go buy 'The Graveyard Book' 74 more times."

Matty: Yes, I've listened to "Neverwhere" on audio more times than any other book I've ever read. I love it so much.

Chelle: I'm, I live for audiobooks now. It's just, it's one of the most engaging ways to enjoy stories. It's so great. So fantastic.

Matty: Especially when you're Neil Gaiman and you have that voice, and I don't bother buying anything of his books that he's not narrating. I just love his narrating so much, and I love it because, I mean, and this kind of gets back to that whole idea of letting your readers see you, that when you're listening to Neil Gaiman read a Neil Gaiman book, then you know it's the way it was supposed to sound, you know? You don't have any intermediary there. It's a direct experience with the author and there's, you know, there's very few authors that are bigger than Neil Gaiman and yet he's finding ways to make that connection to people.

Chelle: And he does. And it's so personal. And, you know, he doesn't have to—I mean, he doesn't have to—but I think he understands that the relationships, those are what feed his soul. Those are what sustain him and get him excited when someone appreciates his work and has questions about his work. And he's able to answer questions about his work. So that's, I mean, there's that is probably the most perfect example of somebody that's engaging, engaging... yeah. Organically and doesn't hide behind, you know, 16 layers of corporate.

Matty: Well, I'm going to flag Neil Gaiman on this episode and see if he notices, which is a great lead-in to another question I wanted to ask, which is, you had talked earlier about this flywheel idea being not just focused on your target reader group but a way to build a community and involve other authors in supporting that approach.

The generosity of the author community

Matty: Can you talk about that a little bit more?

Chelle: Sure. So, I think one of the benefits of this industry, again, is that we have the opportunity to collaborate with others, because if we think of the product as not being a book to sell, but if we think of the product as being a satisfied reader, a happy whale reader, somebody that reads more and more, you can't possibly satisfy that reader with just your books. There's just no way to do it. Unless, you know, unless you're Amanda Lee, who has 4,000 books or something, it's just not possible for you to be the singular person to satisfy them.

And so, if you think of your end goal as a satisfied reader, and you partner with people that you trust to offer their books or to connect them, then you develop this co-opetition of sorts, so that you're cooperating with your perceived competition. This is the only industry where you're not competing for a single sale. I'm not selling a widget. I'm not selling a sticker. I'm not selling a button. I'm selling an experience. And so if you think of that experience as broader than your one story and you think of ways that you can bring in other people to keep that reader, that fan in the ecosystem...

So for example, if you're an urban fantasy writer, you can partner with other urban fantasy writers. They're going to read more than one book. That is the beauty and the grace of this industry, that they're going to read more. And so if you think of it as putting other people on your flywheel to satisfy your reader and keeping their connection and keeping your own relationship with them at the same time, you can go... there's the saying that if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together, and that is the perfect example of it.

If you partner with others, you're going to go that much farther. And they have to have the same writing style or ethics, or they have to write a good book, they have to tell a good story. Your readers trust you to recommend good stories to them. So you do need to read it. You know, make good business decisions where those are concerned. That's where some of the great partners like BookFunnel and StoryOrigin can help you vet some of those and find some of those. Those are great resources for that, but then, you know, again, your whole goal is that satisfied reader.

So, you're never going to be sad. They're never going to be mad at you for recommending a great book to them. They're just not. They're going to be mad at you if you recommend a really bad book to them. So, be sure you're not doing that.

Matty: Yeah. Yeah, I think that aspect they were talking about, how unique the indie author community is, we kind of lose track of because we're in the middle of it. But if you think, if there was like the auto mall, you know, every city has their auto mall, their strip of auto stores, and you're never going to have a situation where someone says, "Come on down, we're having a big party, and, you know, I sell Jeeps, but across the street, there are Fords, you might like a Ford." Or, you know, there is no other industry other than the writing industry where it makes sense, it's both karmically good and business-wise good for people to be supporting each other in that way.

Chelle: It is. And I'm absolutely astonished at how generous this industry is. Constantly, not surprised anymore, I'm constantly gratified to see how generous people are. I can throw out a question to 20 different people and they're going to answer it and they're going to answer it generously, right? And they're going to open up their books or their ideas or share things. That to me is... I say this all the time, and it's absolutely true, I wake up every day and play with my best friends as a job. Like, come on, this is the greatest industry to work in. It's fantastic.

How to listen to your community to adjust your flywheel

Matty: I wanted to hit another topic on the whole idea of the cyclical nature of the flywheel; it's not linear, so you're gathering information as you're having these experiences, and so the people that you're collecting as your community have an opportunity to provide input, explicitly or implicitly, about how that's going. Do you have any perspectives on how an author should listen to their community so that they can make adjustments to their flywheel if that seems appropriate?

Chelle: Sure, so, of course, I'm a technologist, so the first thing I'm going to say is pay attention to what pages they visit on your website. Pay attention to, like, you need to own and pixel them yourself, right? So that you can ethically stalk them around and know what they're doing. That's the first thing, because those cues and those things are very important.

You can set your email up so that if they click on buttons, you get signals and you do have to pay attention to those signals and those are really helpful. So if, for example, you put out a poll, it's almost less important what they answer and more important that they even answer it all and that you're getting engagement back, so that you can see and gauge what kinds of things that you're asking them and what kinds of things you're putting out and what they're responding to.

So it's a constant, it's constantly testing things. It's always A/B testing, A/B/C/D testing, and so on and so forth. But you can pay attention to your data first. And that I think is probably the best. And it's actually the easiest starting point. So for example, if you have someone that comes to your website, the first thing you can do is you can ask them only for their email address. You're not asking them for all kinds of information. You're just asking for the lowest barrier of information, which is their email address. And then the next thing you can do is... You know, send them something that says, "I always like to acknowledge everybody's birthday. Can you send me yours? I always like to send a gift."

So then you're asking for a secondary piece of information, and you're collecting that as you go through, and you're starting to build that relationship. Then you can ask them for their first name. Then you can ask them for their last name. Then you can ask them, you know, what's the top five books that they love. So you can collect data over periods of time and collect that very slowly as you build trust with them, and then pay attention to what they're doing, and what they're reading, and what they're showing. You can offer free chapters on your website, and you can actually see, did they read the entire thing? Did they only read half of it? You can send them emails based on what they did. So if they only read half of it, you can say, "Were you able to finish this?" If they finish it, you can send them an email that says, "Hey, I noticed you finished it. Tell me what you thought." And if they tell you what they thought, that's obviously an engaged reader. You can then say, "Would you—I would love it if you would tell others about it. Here's an easy way to write a review." So you're asking for transactional things, but you're doing it incrementally as you're building that relationship, rather than just saying, "Thank you for buying my book. Here are 85 ways that you can leave me reviews. Here's my next book launch, and here's a freebie," and here's, you know, you're overwhelming them instead of building a relationship with them.

Matty: And I do think that people appreciate that, you know, in the sense of giving people value. I think traditionally the idea was, well, you give them value by giving them a free thing, but there's value in, as you illustrate, you demonstrating that you're listening to what they have to say and you're acting on it or considering it or responding back to them when they provide you with that. I don't want to take us too far down the path because obviously, we could have a whole other conversation about collecting data. But if anyone's listening to this and they're going, "Oh my God, collecting data, that's a good idea." Is there like one thing that you would recommend people do or one resource you would recommend people go to, to kind of start getting an idea of how they can tap into the data that's available to them?

Chelle: Sure. Well, obviously we have indieauthortraining.com where we sort of help people do that. So that is a free resource that we teach people and have webinars and do different things. I like Personally, I tend to not build on rented land, so to speak, so I don't use email service providers in the strictest sense. I don't use MailerLite. I don't use a lot of those others. They're fantastic. They're great to get started. I use Fluent CRM, which is built into my WordPress website, so it's free to get started. Some of the beauty of Fluent CRM is it's a free plugin for WordPress, but you don't have limits to how many emails you can have on your list. Like, some email service providers say, you know, it's free to 2,500 and then it's X number of dollars and X number of dollars, and they have that tiered system. I prefer systems that you don't charge for the numbers of people that you have on your list, so you don't have that impetus to shed people off your list, right? You don't have to be so ruthless to get people off your list.

That might be counterintuitive to what some gurus say, but That's just me. So I like FluentCRM. I also like MailPoet.com because it integrates with WordPress. And again, it's free. They do have the tiered system, but it's free for up to 25 people and inexpensive after that. The reason why I like that is because, again, your data lives on your website. It's not on a different system. It's yours, and you can do with it what you want. And you can see your data within one ecosystem and not off in others.

I have lots of opinions, Matty, don't get me wrong. I could share tech opinions all day long, but those are conversations that we have over on IndieAuthorTraining.com, which is the companion to the magazine, and we built it specifically so people could ask those weird questions and not feel like they're asking dumb questions because we have, and there's lots of people that have contrary opinions, you know, we have Tammy Labreck's over there, All the time, you know, sort of telling, no, that's not what I would do. I'm like, great. Let's figure out the best way for each individual person.

First steps to building a flywheel

Matty: Well, that's a great sort of starting point for people who are wanted to delve into the data side of it. And maybe a good way to sort of wrap up our conversation is to say, if people are similarly wanting to take one step, they're, you're, they're hearing this idea of the flywheel rather than the funnel, and it's feeling right to them. It's feeling brand right for the persona that they want to put out with, is there a step or two you would recommend people take in order to move in that direction?

Chelle: So I would start to look at the newsletters and the emails that you get and start to parse them in a different way and start to see because once you see it, you can't unsee it. Right. And once you start seeing things that you're feeling that you're being sold to, you'll start to see very quickly that they start to fall into two camps. And then you can start to start formulating your own system for, "Oh, that's something I like. I might say that in my next newsletter, or I that's something I like, I might, you know, work on that on my website." So I think the first part is just the awareness, start looking at the things that you're looking at your own email in your own newsletters and the things that you're consuming, and start to be more aware of that.

Chelle: I also, you're going to laugh, but I also think TikTok is a fantastic resource for folks to start studying some of this. They'll start to see how people engage. Now, there are lots and lots of theories about TikTok and how to do TikTok and why to do TikTok. But for me, it's probably the most interesting case study, if you will. You can see how people relate and the things that they say. There's one particular TikToker that I love. Her name is Natalia Hernandez, and she is so relatable, and she sells a million, billion, gazillion books, but she does it in such a relatable way. She asks interesting questions, and she stitches people, and she's got a great presence on camera. That's all well, good and fine, but you can start to study people that really do have that relational spark and start to think about ways that you can incorporate it. So it doesn't have to feel so antithetical to what you're doing now, right? You don't have to reinvent everything. You can just start to incorporate some of those things a little bit slowly.

Matty: I like that idea of taking a look at the things that each person relates to as a consumer and understanding that, that probably indicates it would be comfortable for you to do and therefore is the brand you want to put out there and should be comfortable for the people that you want to attract to yourself.

Chelle: Yeah, there are lots and lots of ways that you can start to move towards that without reinventing or, you know, turning the game board upside down.

Matty: So cool. Well, Chelle, thank you so much. I appreciate you talking through the sales flywheel with us and lots of other fascinating topics. So, please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.

Chelle: Sure, so, the easiest way is to go to IndyAuthorMagazine.com, that's the baby, and also IndyAuthorTraining.com, that is our new conversation and education platform where we have lots and lots of different educators that are coming together in a space and, with support and a community, to talk about some of these things that are happening in our industry. So, and of course at AuthorNation, I'm the Programming Director for AuthorNation, so I'd love to see everybody in Vegas November 11th through the 15th.

Matty: I will be there.

Chelle: It's going to be such a great conference. I'm so excited. I can barely contain my enthusiasm for this. It's really, really great. I'm really excited about the transition from 20 books and keeping all of the great stuff that we had at 20 books for so long, I was there from day one, and now transitioning into something that serves our industry in the future, it's just, it's going to be fantastic.

Matty: Yeah, you guys are obviously putting a ton of thought and care into that. I've been interested in following that and the updates you're sending out and, the State of the Nation podcast. So, I'm going to be super excited to be there myself and see what's the same and what's different. Thank you so much.

Chelle: Thanks, Matty.

Matty Dalrymple 5/21/24 Matty Dalrymple 5/21/24

Episode 239 - Moving the Needle to a Different Track with Johnny B. Truant

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Johnny B. Truant discusses MOVING THE NEEDLE TO A DIFFERENT TRACK, including the impetus for him starting his podcast, "The Art of Noticing" and what drove his creative pivot; the importance of not missing the magic that's happening around you; supporting the artisan writer; the age of the iconoclast writer; the power of being authentically you; the necessity to segregate your audiences; and the power of stepping back.

Johnny B. Truant is the bestselling author of Fat Vampire, adapted by SyFy as "Reginald the Vampire" starring Spider-Man's Jacob Batalon. His other books include PRETTY KILLER, PATTERN BLACK, INVASION, THE BEAM, DEAD CITY, and over 100 other titles across many genres. Originally from Ohio, Johnny and his family now live in Austin, Texas, where he’s finally surrounded by creative types as weird as he is.

Episode Links

https://johnnybtruant.com

Summary

This episode of "The Indy Author Podcast" featuring Johnny B. Truant covers a wide range of topics, focusing primarily on Truant's career, his perspective on writing and creativity, and the concept of "The Art of Noticing." Truant, a bestselling author known for "Fat Vampire" and other titles, discusses his journey in the writing world, his move to a more artisan, true fan-oriented approach, and his latest project, a podcast about noticing the unnoticed in our daily lives.

Truant's conversation starts with the background of his name, inspired by "House of Leaves," and his venture into writing across various genres. He talks about his transition from a public to a more private figure in the writing community, motivated by the desire to focus on his craft rather than the business side of writing. This shift led to the creation of his podcast, "The Art of Noticing," where he shares weekly (now daily) insights drawn from everyday observations, aiming to inspire and inform the creative community.

The podcast is a reaction to the changing landscape of the writing industry, where the pressure to rapidly produce content can overshadow the artistry and personal connection to writing. Truant emphasizes the importance of authenticity and connection with a dedicated readership over mass appeal. He advocates for an artisanal approach to writing, producing content that is true to the author's vision and resonates with a core audience, even if it means deviating from mainstream expectations.

Throughout the conversation, Truant stresses the value of noticing—the act of observing and finding inspiration in the mundane or overlooked aspects of daily life. This process not only serves as a creative exercise but also as a means to remain grounded and present in a fast-paced world. He shares anecdotes and examples from his podcast, illustrating how simple observations can lead to profound insights and reflections on personal and artistic life.

Truant's dialogue with the host, Matty Dalrymple, also touches on the challenges and rewards of maintaining a distinct voice and vision in the writing industry. He discusses the balance between producing content that satisfies creative aspirations and meeting the expectations and demands of the market. Truant's approach is characterized by a focus on depth and quality, fostering a close-knit community of readers who appreciate his unique style and perspective.

The episode encapsulates Truant's journey from a prolific author to a thoughtful observer and commentator on the creative process. It highlights his commitment to authenticity, the joy of discovery through noticing, and the importance of nurturing a genuine connection with one's audience. The discussion concludes with Truant encouraging writers to find their own path, prioritize meaningful engagement over quantity, and embrace the nuances of their creative journey.

In essence, the conversation with Johnny B. Truant on "The Indy Author Podcast" provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of writing and publishing, underscoring the significance of authenticity, observation, and personal connection in the creative endeavor.

Transcript

Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Johnny B. Truant. Hey, Johnny, how are you doing?

Johnny: Hey, thanks for having me!

Matty: I am pleased to have you here.

Meet Johnny B. Truant

Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Johnny B. Truant is the bestselling author of "Fat Vampire," adapted by Sci-Fi as an original movie, starring Spider-Man's Jacob Batalon. His other books include "Pretty Killer," "Pattern Johnny," "Invasion," "The Beam," "Dead City," and over 100 other titles across many genres. Originally from Ohio, Johnny and his family now live in Austin, Texas, where he's finally surrounded by the creative types as weird as he is. And, Johnny, you can tell me if I'm the last person to figure this out, but I think I now know where you got the inspiration for your public-facing name because I've been reading “House of Leaves.”

Johnny: Boom. Yeah, you are not the first person to figure that out, but you are the first person to directly figure it out and bring it to me. So, there are people who've kind of asked, or there are people I've mentioned it to, or there are people who've been like, "Do you know that there's also a Johnny Truant in 'House of Leaves'?" But you're the first person to nail it like that.

Matty: Oh, good! Do you want to talk a little bit about who Johnny Truant is for people who maybe aren't familiar with "House of Leaves," and why you chose that name?

Johnny: Oh, there's no grand thought behind it. I was reading it at the time, and I liked it as a name, I guess. And it turns out that there's a UK metal band called Johnny Truant, which is a direct homage, I suppose. And so that's where the B came from because I was like, well, I'll look for a Twitter handle. At the time, this was back when Twitter was Twitter, and it was back when Twitter didn't make me want to kill myself. So, I was on Twitter, and I needed a name and I said, "Let me stick a B in there." So yeah, that's the story, for what it's worth.

Matty: Yeah, well, I enjoyed having known that name first through your author-related appearances and then seeing it in "House of Leaves" was great.

Johnny: That's hilarious.

Matty: So, I invited you on the podcast to talk about "The Art of Noticing," which I believe is a fairly recent podcast you're working on. We’ll discuss the podcast itself in a little bit, but I love the idea of you framing a whole set of messages around the art of noticing. So why did you decide to do that? What were you seeing in the creative community that led you to feel an emphasis on the art of noticing was important?

Johnny: Well, I enjoy doing podcasts. Since I'm talking to you, I assume you do too. It's a form of communication I like. Obviously, I enjoy writing as well, but I prefer to talk when discussing my work rather than writing it out. That's where it started: "What if I did something new?" Just a bit of background, this is after a self-imposed—well, I don't want to use terms that are too strong—it's not a hiatus or isolation, but I was much less public-facing because we used to do the Self-Publishing Podcast, our Smarter Artist Summit, Masterminds. I decided to just be an author. Then, due to certain events that are too extensive to get into, I decided to re-engage publicly. So what to do? A podcast seemed right. I tossed around a few ideas that didn't stick because they were overcomplicated. I needed something bite-sized, interesting, that would help the community, and that writers struggle with, where I would have a never-ending source of topics. Having done many podcasts and blog post series, you can run out of ideas. So originally, it was about sharing something I learned weekly—it's practically daily now. I’m a curious person, and I love to learn. One of the first ideas before it was about noticing, and more about learning, was inspired by "A Quiet Place." Do you remember seeing that?

Matty: Yes, I did see that.

Johnny: So, the character has a hearing aid that, where it attaches, there's a thing attached to her head, her skull. And I saw someone in real life with a similar one, and I thought, I knew it was a hearing aid, but I didn't know what it was. So I decided to look it up.

It turns out it's called a bone-anchored hearing system. It's for a certain kind of hearing loss where sound can telegraph through bone, and they can enhance it. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I like learning little tidbits.

But the problem is, do people want to know about random things that are unassociated with one another? My mother had a branding firm, so I understand the importance of having a coherent theme and a container for everything. It just slowly evolved into, well, what if I noticed something that is inconsequential?

Not that the hearing aid thing is inconsequential—that's more trivia. But if I could notice something that just feels like I've never thought about that before, it's right there, but I just never noticed it before. And some of them are learnings. I asked myself, what creative lessons can I take from this? And that's kind of how it was born.

Matty: So did you land on the noticing aspect because you felt it was something that other creative people were not paying sufficient attention to?

Johnny: No, it's really more because I wanted more inspiration for myself. And this is maybe a little bit more global, but I think there's a lot of magic that happens around us that we're blind to because we get into our own little silos of attention and we're just aware that like somebody hasn't liked our post on Instagram enough.
I'm not on Instagram, so that might not be the right term. But you know, you obsess about something and you're unaware of all the amazing things that are going on. So that's less about artistic inspiration. It's less about a particular thing that you would notice, but it's more about, let's get out of our usual entrenched ways of being and take the blinders off.

So it was about me at first. I wanted a way to keep coming up with ideas for myself, especially since I don't—I'm a good articulator, I'm not always a great imaginer. Like, it's difficult for me to come up with something out of the blue. I tend to be like, give me an idea and then I can run with it, and I can find new aspects of it.

But as far as starting fresh, so that to me was like, this can also be a wellspring of inspiration. And hey, if I can do a short-form podcast—cause just to be clear, these are nine minutes of content and then I got a bumper that's like, you know, makes it ten minutes—that's sustainable for me. I can just make a quick note and then I can just, I ramble, you know, for ten minutes in a way that is hopefully coherent.

And so it hit that perfect Venn diagram circle intersection of something I wanted to do, something I felt I could do well, something that would be useful to me, and hopefully something that would be useful to other creatives as well.

Matty: That's really interesting because it was not the answer I was expecting. I was expecting the answer to be that you saw creatives were getting too deep in their Instagram post likes or whatever, and that was the driver rather than the desire to spin up a podcast. But I think I thought that because I definitely saw myself in that pool of people who I imagined you were targeting, suffering as a result of not noticing.

And I really like the aspect of the podcast where you make these tie-ins from the thing you're noticing to the creative life. It's less about the trivia that might be shared; it's more the exercise of, "Oh, I can be doing that too." And I find it very refreshing. Unlike other writing and creative-related podcasts I listen to, where I always leave with an action item, this one feels like a mindset change because it encourages me to pay attention to things I would otherwise overlook. So I find it very valuable, like a mental palate cleanser for me.

Like, you know, I'll be taking a break from writing or my Instagram posts, and it's just a nice little shot of, "Let's just step back for a minute and think about this or look around us."

Johnny: Yeah, well thank you for bringing that up because the intro does say something about how I take something mundane and how you can do the same, and it was meant to be sort of like a word of the day calendar approach. It is daily now, and so every single day if somebody has a 10-minute commute or they go on a walk, they can get that quick hit.

And that was important, but I also wanted to train people. For those who aren't looking for ideas from me, maybe they're looking for that mindset shift.

Johnny: And just if I could go on just a small diversion that's kind of related to this whole thing is that I used to sell to authors. Like, I used to have a business that in some way, shape, or form, I was offering some form of services. Either we had our events, or we had the self-publishing podcast — really just wanted people, but it did feed that business. Like, there was a business aim. And I don't have that anymore.

And I don't want it anymore. So the only thing that I have for sale for authors right now is a 7-month sub stack membership. Right? So it's just like, it's just barely there. And, but the reason that I'm still in this space, like talking to authors, is because, and I've written some really long posts on this, is that the way, the trends that I'm seeing in the space, I feel are discouraging to a lot of new authors and that bugs me.

And what I'm referring to is, you know, our book, "Write, Publish, Repeat," helped to extort some of this, but that rapid release churn and burn, nothing against it. Like, I just want to be clear, the people that it works for, wonderful, but I think of this new person coming in and saying, okay, I just attended my first writer's conference.

You're telling me I need to write a book every two weeks to survive, and I just want to tell my story. Or, you know, I just heard about this author over here who's using AI to, you know, throw in, like, plot lines, and they're generating whole books, and they're going to do a thousand books this year.

Like, you hear those stories. Now, again, that's them. It's not me. I'm more of an artisan approach. And so, I have this global feeling of wanting to intercede on behalf of that author who either is established and still figuring things out, is established and feels run over by that, and just wants to kind of slow down and make their art and tell their story, or especially the new person who's like, I got into this because this was my dream.

Like, I wanted to share my story, I wanted to live an artistic life, and crap, right? This isn't what I signed up for. So "The Art of Noticing" and the whole, like when I write for authors now, that is the main goal, is I just, there's not a lot in it for me anymore, monetarily speaking. So that's part of what this is an attempt to say, look, if I can inspire you in any way, that's what I want to do.

Matty: I really like that idea of sending out a message that's different than the churn and burn message, because I've mentioned this a couple of times on the podcast—my author friends are going to laugh that I'm saying it again—but I'm trying to banish the word "just" in the context of, you know, "I just have four books" or "I just have 50 people on my email list" and whenever that happens it makes me sad because I think somebody who's written four books, four freaking books, they're saying "just four books," like, it just makes me sad, and if you have 50 people on your email list, it doesn't mean you don't want 5,000, but let's celebrate the 50, while we still have the goal of getting to 500, and I think that kind of thing is really what you're saying is very supportive of that.

Johnny: Yeah. I mean, it's a whole rabbit hole, but I'm a "thousand true fans" guy. I don't necessarily want to chart on Amazon through that anymore. I want my thousand true fans and I think that's the way the smaller author who prefers to take their time and wants to really put craftsmanship into their work, I think that's the way to go.

What drove Johnny's pivot?

Matty: Well, there, I'm going to take this conversation a little bit in a different direction than I originally thought. But you said a couple of things that I think are very interesting. One is that you started the podcast and you said, "It was about me at first," and also the fact that you weren't going into this as another stream of income in your author business.

Can you just talk about that? And you're also talking about ways that your approach has changed, maybe from the churn and burn to the more artisan approach, and things like that. Can you just describe a little bit about how your general gestalt about the creative process has changed and in what ways it's stayed the same?

Johnny: Yeah. Again, I'd like to repeat at the top of this—this soapbox sermon, which I hope it isn't—is that I am in no way disparaging anybody who chooses to do things differently than me because that's the way it can sound. So even the thing, the words that I used, and you just repeated them, churn and burn.

I'm sorry to those of you who are Rapid Release authors; I don't mean that to be pejorative. That's what it feels like to me because I am the kind of person—and this despite getting a reputation as a person who produced a lot of books, and that's what "Write, Publish, Repeat," our book... So I get it. But I also believe that you can pivot as a creative person.

And I think that you should. I think that you should look at the world around you, your current situation, where you want to go. And that's not flip-flopping; that's changing your mind and being a creative person who is doing it.

I've never been able to do anything that felt mercenary. It's kind of a shame because I think I would have been good at it. At mercenary. I have that mind, but I just can't do it. I can't do something that doesn't really speak to me.

Matty: I can imagine there are many people who are listening to this, and they're seeing their own experience in what you're saying. So that maybe they went into this thinking that rapid release was what they wanted to do and they're feeling angsty about it, but they feel like, well, no, I committed to this direction.

Like, I've got to keep pursuing it because this is the right way. And I'm just wondering, like, what markers did you see in your own life that made you say, now's the time for me to take a step back and look at something different?

Johnny: Yeah. I, the universe seems to need to push me in a new direction. So I am a creature of momentum and habit to some degree. So if things were working, if things about the old way that I was doing things were working, then I think I would probably still be doing it, possibly to my detriment. But the thing is, I write odd books.

And at the beginning, for some reason, I was able to, I don't know, hit certain tropes, or we presented our books in certain ways, or we did hit that algorithmic thing just right. And so I was able to sell a lot of my odd books. So for instance, my most well-known book is "Fat Vampire," which is already weird.

It's not really a vampire book. It's like this, it's maybe like a "Shaun of the Dead" sort of thing. But anyway, that's "Fat Vampire." Compare that to "Twilight," "Interview with a Vampire," or "Vampire Diaries" like these mainstream vampire things that stick with just vampirism do much better than these little cult things.

So I've always had these niches, even our big series "Invasion," which is this alien invasion action epic. The first book is very much two tropes. It, you know, they're fleeing an invasion, but then not to spoil it, but the ending was unsatisfying to some people because we took it in a really different direction.

And then the rest of the series gets all weird and philosophical. So those are the kind of books that I write. And I'm not able to not do that. I mean, I have tried. I've tried to say, "I'm going to write this book that will do really well." And it's not going to happen. So somehow the market... You know, I had to figure something out, and I just, I mentioned that five-year quiet time.

And what happened during that was I was working with some friends at Sterling and Stone Story Studio, and they're the ones who did the Smarter Artist Summit and all that. So that's Sean Platt, my co-writer and everything. And they were handling everything for me. So I didn't have to do anything other than write.

And so it was really easy to say, I'm just going to keep writing. Well, fast forward. It's a long string of events and it doesn't matter, but I ended up negotiating with them to get back the rights to most of my books because I just, I don't know, I wanted to try it on my own. I went to the last 20 Books, and I said, boy, I could be doing this cool stuff, but only if I have all the control.

And when I got out there, I very quickly realized that, kind of KDP Select whale readers, rapid release, all the stuff that we helped roll the ball forward in terms of talking about that had gotten so much farther down the pipe because again, I was out of that for five years I didn't pay attention and it I was my weird books were no longer tenable and they hadn't really been all the while either, like for the people who were doing it, it wasn't.

So this was a move of necessity, but it was also a heart space move because I've always wanted to make the books, stories, however I wanted to tell them, not what was tropey or not what was successful right now. I just wanted to do that. And it was just a move of necessity where I realized that I was not, if I wanted to sell any books, I was going to have to find my true fans.

Johnny: Now, I will give you some further reading on this for your listeners. So I wrote two posts on Russell Nolte’s Substack called "The Author Stack," and it's at authorstack.substack.com. I wrote a guest post called "We're Entering the Age of the Iconoclast Writer," which I said the author of.

And then the second one is called "Exposing Yourself for Fun and Profit." And the first one is about the shift that I'm talking about where if you want to go down what I'm calling this artisan author path—because there's a fork in the road. So as things get more systematized, more rapid release, more conforming to a genre, and more fast books, there's a contingent of authors and writers who are like, "Whoa, I was okay when it was in the middle, but look at how far it's gone. I want to be over here." So writers and authors, and I talked to a bunch of them at 20 books, and they're like, "I'm not playing that game anymore. I was willing to play it for a while, but now it's become so incredibly not me that I need to do something else." And luckily the readers, there are a contingent of readers who feel the same way, that they're like, "I don't want to read the KDP Select books. I want to read something that's unique and interesting." And so if you go all-in on this kind of artisan thing where I'm making beautiful physical editions of my books as much as I can now. I'm leaning fully and completely into the weirdness and the weird types of books that I'm, that are me. And I launched my web store, and it very much is me and my weirdness.

And so that's what that first post is about, is about this option for another way of doing things, which I would call the artist and author approach.

Being authentically you

Johnny: And that's the post called "We're Entering the Age of the Iconoclast Writer." The other one, which is called "Exposing Yourself for Fun and Profit," is kind of a sequel to it.

And exposing yourself, in this case, is obviously tongue-in-cheek. It's the idea that, in order to attract true fans, you need to expose who you are. You need to be yourself. You need to take personal and emotional risks because that is how true fans connect with you. They don't connect with you if you're bland and "let me be professional and let me show you my professional author headshot.

And so those two posts together kind of sum up everything that I think. I think that if you're going to be the artist and author, that means you're no longer playing the "as cheap as possible but as many books as possible" game, and you're stepping over here into like, if you go into a really nice coffee shop, you're paying a lot more for coffee.

But it's made with care and artistry and the best ingredients. And that's the way I see this book thing is, and again, I have to watch because I don't want to speak ill of the competition, but it is an artisan approach. I mean, I'm making hardbacks. Who makes hardbacks? But the people who want that artisan thing want hardbacks.

I'm putting more care into my internal formatting. I'm putting more, I'm not backing off the intricacies in my stories that tend to drive people away, but that works best if you get your thousand true fans rather than as many sales as possible on Amazon or Kobo or Barnes & Noble. And so that's what the second post is about—how to fully attract those fans by being the most authentically you because only you can be you.

Matty: I can imagine a nice simpatico relationship, and I'm not sure if I'm seeing it, what you're describing, but you can tell me if this is playing out for you, but that someone who had decided to follow that path of, "I want a small, deep pool of fans, not a broad, shallow pool of fans," and that the idea of putting something out there frequently, like a daily 10-minute podcast, could be very appealing, both to telegraph the kind of persona that you want to telegraph to and to find the people that you want to find.

Now I'm saying, I'm not sure I'm seeing it play out because there's a weirdness aspect of the Art of Noticing, but it's not deeply weird. But, if you were doing a 10-minute video on something related to the offshoot of vampires that you're following in your own work, then I could see a direct correlation there of sort of like, market research and reader outreach, but are you finding a connection there between building that pool of readers you through the podcast?

Johnny: No, not at all. Thank you for bringing that back around though, because I was thinking like, wow, we're really not talking about the Art of Noticing.

The necessity of segregating your audiences

Johnny: No, I used to throw everybody into one pool, and I think that a lot of authors do this. I think that a lot of authors have a tendency to write their books, and then to, I mean, you're doing it, right?

And then speak to authors about what they're doing, right? So you write your books, and then you talk to other authors, and a lot of people kind of throw that together. As did I. It's not a great idea, in my opinion, so I now keep the hot side hot and the cool side cool, like the old McB.L.T. So I have "The Art of Noticing" which is very much for authors, and I've made sure that the authors know that I have this reader side over here because some of them are dual allegiance.

But plenty are not. And the authors just want author stuff, and the readers just want reader stuff, and they don't want to hear the author stuff. So I basically kept that author side alive with this podcast. It really is close to, I don't know, giving back in a weird way? Like, I hate to sound overly noble, that's not really the intention.

But I can't think of another reason to do it because with like 20 or 30 people paying me on Substack, there's not... I have no desire or intention to ever offer any other author-facing stuff or charge for a course. Like, I'm not doing that anymore. So the only thing I can think is, I don't know, I guess I just must like helping authors.

But you're right because they're different audiences. So, and weird is probably overstating it, I would say just quirky. And if you were to be on my reader list, then I think you would probably see that I just kind of let me be me. But it's not weird, but it is, it's not censored.

I'm not trying to be anything I'm not.

Matty: Well, I'm seeing all sorts of lessons for myself from the podcast point of view because I do sometimes, for example, at the beginning of a podcast episode, if I have a book that's on sale, I will mention it. Although as you're saying, probably the people who are listening to my podcast are not necessarily the people who are reading my books.

I'm doing it almost as a way to prove that I'm in the trenches with you. You know, I'm just not talking about this stuff. I'm also experiencing it, which I think has some value, but maybe not as much value as I had hoped. But the other thing that I really like is you had said early on about offering something that was very simple.

And it is a very simple podcast. It's you, as you had said, you talking for like minutes and 30 seconds and then a very brief intro and outro. And I can imagine that, to generalize this beyond just a selfish question for my own podcast, it's sort of like the minimum viable product of a podcast, not content-wise, but format-wise.

So how did you decide what you wanted to include there and not include there?

Like, did it start out bigger and you thought, no, no, that's not really necessary? Or did it start out longer and you decided that 10 minutes was sufficient?

Johnny: Yeah. I mean, I have a philosophy degree and so I tend to think too much. And so I had, I don't even remember what it was, but there was something that I tried out and I recorded a test episode of some big question that I had about life or existence. I don't even know.

But like, I don't know how you work, but for me, if I record something and then I can't make myself listen back to it, I'm like, oh, that's a problem. Like, I know that is not good and nobody's going to care. So it did take me time to winnow down to this idea of something that was hopefully just really consumable, and I like the ubiquity of it.

The idea is, and it's funny that we haven't actually talked about any of the specific noticings, I'm realizing this now, is, you know, people think, well, I need to go to a scenic overlook to be inspired, or I need to go out in the ocean or something like that. And the idea is not really, it's all around you.

We're just blind to what's around us. And I don't know, I mean, I think that felt to me very accessible because anybody can do that. Any creative can do that. Anybody who's sit, even if you're like a shut in, if you're an author who doesn't want to leave at all, then there's things around that you can notice the, you know, the wood grain in your table.

You can notice the way that the clock ticks very loudly and you hadn't noticed it before. Those are all things that can be drawn, that inspiration can be drawn from,

Matty: There was, there was one other thing I wanted to talk about, and then I'm going to mention a couple of, art of noticing titles, because I do want to give people a little flavor for the kinds of things that you share there.

The Power of Stepping Back

Matty: But one of the things you had mentioned was this idea that you had taken a sabbatical, or whatever the non-dramatic term is that, one would want to use to that for, you know, five years, and it sounds as if by doing that you were able to step back and get that, a different perspective on your career that maybe took you in a different direction.

And there may be people who say, I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to take five years off, but do you feel like there's a way that people can experience the benefit of what you learned in your sabbatical, in a way that's practical for, maybe a greater majority of writers?

Johnny: Yeah, sure. I mean, if, let me first just knock down the, I realized that I didn't give you much to work with, but let me just knock down sabbatical because it sounds like I, it sounds like a rich person thing to like, I'm going to go travel the world. It was just that I didn't want to do anything involved with writing other than writing.

And I stopped doing all the public-facing stuff. So I was still writing books, but I was, that was all I was doing. And I think that when I came up out of that and I said, okay, now I need to, now I want to. Sell these books because by the way, and don't let me lose the track here, is I realized that for me, the art is not just storytelling for me. The art is everything around it. It's communicating with people It's building kind of a world and curiosity. It's building a brand a visual and spoken and articulated brand is very interesting to me. That's part of my art.

Moving the needle to a different track

Johnny: But for me, this process, hey, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you an odd answer, so let's see what you think about this. Is, I think I've grown very introspective. I don't know that I always was, but I think I'm very curious about why I think the ways that I do and why I'm doing what I'm doing.

And I've got this metaphor that I've kind of developed for those of you who are into vinyl or have, you know, are old enough to remember when records were all there was, the idea of, if you wanted to skip to a different song, you picked up the needle and you put it down in a new place.

And I think that so many of us go through life just playing the same track and you're just letting it play forward and I think every once in a while I think of that as a reset. It might not be a perfect metaphor. So I see this with my kids. So my kids are almost 16 and 19 and they're changing so fast that the only way that I can kind of like stay current with them in terms of this is the person I'm relating with now, rather than this is the person that I used to be relating with, and I'm still hanging on to that old image, is that metaphor of like, I'm going to disconnect from where I am right now, scramble, scratch everything, and I think of this as like lifting up the needle and putting it back down to where they actually are today.

So with my kids, it's like, Oh! Okay, I shouldn't be treating my daughter like she's 12 anymore because now she's almost 16 and I get to know that new person and I think I do that with a lot. I think I've developed a habit of trying to pick up the needle, trying to disconnect from what is currently happening, and then question my own assumptions.

And when I do that, then I find, oh, there's no reason to do what I'm doing. Or, why am I doing that? That used to be something that I did back when this was true, but that's no longer true, but out of momentum, I did that. So, my actual specific advice, which I think is a little weird for this, is, I meditate, and I spend a lot of time trying to be quiet. I take a lot of walks, I do spend a lot of time thinking, it's metacognition, it's thinking about thinking, I want to understand the ways that I think, the reasons that I do what I do, and not just do anything just because it's always been done, and I think if you do that, then you start to say, so I'll give you an example.

So I was doing a lot of stuff that was author-facing once I got back into this, in addition to the "Art of Noticing" podcast, and it's a lot of work, and that's fine, but there was this moment where I said, "Wait a minute. I'm not going to do another seminar. I'm not going to hold a boot camp. I'm not going to sell. I'm not going to write more nonfiction books for authors. Why do I feel that this is something I need to do?" Because by the way, the parts that I let go of, I wasn't enjoying doing. So why would I do that? But it was a genuine epiphany. It was like, "Oh my god, how did I not notice that there's no purpose to this?"

Oh, by the way, it also wasn't effective. So it also wasn't growing. So why was I doing it? But I think that we have all sorts of things like that in our creative careers, where we're either doing something because somebody told us once, or because we did it yesterday, or because we don't want to do it again.

We think that it looks like quitting if we stop it, or we think we'll be criticized if we do something weird. And I think if you try to just wipe the slate clean as much as you can and think about your own thought process from as objective a standpoint as you can, I think that's the key.

Matty: I love that. And it's a message that I love hearing myself because I'm a very organized person. I spent many, many years in the corporate world as a project manager. And so I have everything in a list and I try to be very intentional about, you know, when I get up, I get my tea, I sit down at the computer, I open up my list and I try to be very intentional about saying, "Okay, what has bubbled to the top of the list is, update my BookBub ads. Do I really want to be doing that? Is that how I want to be spending my time? Hey, do I even want to be selling BookBub ads?" And so my attempt to be very intentional about it, but it's very difficult because it's super easy to just get sucked into that, "BookBub ads has bubbled to the top of the list, that's what I'm going to be doing this morning."

And I really like that idea of stepping back and noticing other things, as a way of not letting yourself get sucked into that rut. Yeah, please.

Johnny: I think that we tend to have a to-do list mentality that says, this is on my list, so I'm going to do it. And what I kind of like to do, and I learned this mentality from some Tony Robbins thing that I listened to years and years ago, and it was the idea of starting with your outcome. So for instance, BookBub ads.

So by the way, a lot of times for me, that sort of thing is procrastination. I'm like, well, this, I can just do this, and I don't have to come up with a story. Right. Which is way harder, but sometimes it's like, you genuinely want to do it, but what you're trying to do is, I guess, sell more books, but I would really say just grow.

Like, get it as vague as you can. What do I want to do? I want to grow. I want to, in whatever way that means to you. And then once you know where you're trying to go with a given set of to-dos, to then go back and say, okay, what's the best way to grow? And sometimes it's, do your BookBub ads.

But sometimes you might go, well, wait a minute. No, there's a much better way to do it that I've completely forgotten about. So I kind of like that thinking as well.

Matty: Yeah, absolutely.

The art of noticing

Matty: And I'm glad we had that conversation because I was thinking, I really can't call this episode "The Art of Noticing" anymore. And when you said, moving the needle to a different track,

Johnny: There you go. Okay. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I was like, you had me on to talk about the art of noticing and look where I'm going.

Matty: Oh, I think this is great, not getting stuck in the rut of what the assigned topic was, I think is perfect. So I do want to give you a chance to just share an example of the kind of things you talk about on the podcast. And I came up with some topics.

So, one that I really enjoyed was the "sticks and vines are good enough." Do you remember what the background of that one was?

Johnny: Yeah, I do. So, this was during a sequence where we went for Thanksgiving break. We usually take just a small local car trip with another family and we were out in South Texas. And, I was just driving down the road and there were, and we've all seen this, by the way. If somebody's listening to this and is like, well, that's obvious, that's the point.

The point is that they're obvious. So I noticed that instead of fence posts, that a lot of the people that had long fence runs just used random hunks of wood or big thick vines. And to me, that lesson spoke of—so that's the noticing. The noticing is, oh, they're not fence posts, they're whatever. Which functionally, like, who cares?

Because when you have that big of a fence front, unless you have really aggressive animals, they just need a barrier. So who cares? And the idea, if I remember right, the episode, I tried to draw two to three creative lessons that could apply directly to writing. And they're probably things like, consider options you haven't considered before, in terms of your creativity.

Don't feel that you need to do things because they're the quote unquote right way to do them. So, it's kind of the picking up the needle thing. Like, why are you, why do you think you need to use fence posts? Why do you think, so, not to pick on you because I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but why do you think you need to use BookBub ads?

You know, there may be other more creative ways to do it. There may be ways that would work better there may be ways that save you money or require less management, but also having unconventional characters.

I know that I did one on when it was Halloween and I noticed that. So the last Halloween was 2023. And if you go back, you know, just three years from that, it was 2020. And our neighborhood did do Halloween, but they did 'em at a distance. They were throwing candy to the kids or something like that. And there weren't a lot of people. And so by 2023 I know it was like, oh, I just noticed Halloween is back.

I'm in one of those neighborhoods where like, everybody drives to, so it's like Mardi Gras, and you can't get through the crowds, but I noticed that it had diminished quite a bit because of COVID, and I noticed that this year it's back, and so the lesson there was the resilience of traditions and routines that give people a sense of comfort, and I believe that one of the lessons that I pulled out of that one was about imbuing that, imbuing characters with that attribute, because you'll see a lot of times people who are in dire straits, either financially or socially or whatever, they have strong community ties or family ties or spiritual beliefs or rituals that they do.

And they cling maybe a little more tightly to those things than people who don't have to worry about anything. And so taking characters and saying, well, what if you gave them, there was another one about superstitions and those sorts of things, I think, make characters pop in a way that we don't normally think of.

Matty: Well, this was so much fun. This is one of the most wide-ranging conversations I've had, and certainly one of the most inspirational, so thank you for being willing to entertain my wide-ranging questions.

Johnny: Well, the readers didn't hear our preamble, which was, I don't prepare, I just talk off the cuff. So this is what happens when I talk off the cuff.

Matty: I count on that, I count on that. So, Johnny, thank you so much. This has been so much fun, and please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you are doing online.

Johnny: I have finally gotten my head together and just put it all in one place. And it's just johnnybtruant.com. Everything you would care about is there.

Matty: Cool. Thank you so much.

Johnny: Thanks.

Matty Dalrymple 5/14/24 Matty Dalrymple 5/14/24

Episode 238 - The Big Indie Author Data Drop 2024 with Melissa Addey

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Melissa Addey discusses THE BIG INDIE AUTHOR DATA DROP 2024, including author income data; whether trad pub income is spikier than indie pub income; the growth of libraries; the continuing popularity of paperback; selling direct; trends in KU; the power of the backlist; behavioral aspects of indie authors (it's not what I would have expected!); the fact that indie and trad is not an either / or decision; and the importance of seeing the bigger picture (not just the shiny objects).

Until recently (when Matty took over the role) Melissa Addey was The Alliance of Independent Authors Campaigns Manager, focusing on ethics and excellence in self-publishing, as well as an author of historical fiction set in China, Morocco, and Ancient Rome.

Episode Links

ALLi's Links:
www.allianceindependentauthors.org
www.allianceindependentauthors.org/facts is where all authors can collect the latest copy of the Big Indie Author Data Drop

Melissa's Links:
This is the link for The Dragon Throne, the escape room based on Melissa's book! https://www.lockedingames.co.uk/rooms-prices/the-dragon-throne-2/

From Intro:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200672390#aicontent

Summary

This episode of "The Indy Author Podcast" features an interview between host Matty Dalrymple and guest Melissa Addey, Campaigns Manager at the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). They discuss the Big Indie Author Data Drop Report 2024, author income data, and trends in indie publishing. Here are the key points:

Background of Melissa Addey
- Melissa Addey works with ALLi, focusing on ethics and excellence in self-publishing.
- She is an author of historical fiction set in different parts of the world.
- Her involvement with ALLi led to the creation of the Indie Author Income Survey, revealing indie authors often earn more than traditionally published ones.

Key Findings and Discussions
- Data Scarcity in Indie Publishing: Melissa emphasized the lack of comprehensive data in self-publishing, which motivated ALLi to conduct its own research, including income surveys.
- Indie Author Income Survey: This survey found that indie authors were making more money than traditionally published authors, with income growing 53 percent year-on-year.
- Big Indie Author Data Drop: ALLi gathered data from various organizations, revealing insights like 75% of books sold were part of a series, underscoring the commercial advantage of series writing.

Emerging Trends
- Growth in Library Revenue: Libraries are becoming significant revenue sources for indie authors, with a 45% increase in revenue.
- Demand for Diverse Characters: Readers, especially Gen Z, are seeking stories with diverse characters, reflecting a broader societal shift towards inclusivity.
- Preference for Paperbacks: Despite the rise of ebooks, there's a growing interest in paperbacks, partly influenced by social media and the tangible nature of books.
- Direct Sales Increase: There’s a noticeable rise in authors selling directly to consumers, highlighting a shift towards more control over sales and marketing.

Behavioral Insights
- Character Traits of Successful Authors: Research indicated that successful indie authors tend to be less amiable, suggesting a degree of stubbornness and resilience is beneficial.
- Positive Sentiment towards Self-Publishing: A high percentage of indie authors view self-publishing positively, highlighting satisfaction with this publishing route.

Strategic Considerations for Authors
- Series Writing: Given the commercial success of series, authors are encouraged to consider this format for their works.
- Diverse Representation: The call for diverse characters is not just about their presence but about integrating them into the fabric of the narrative in a natural, unforced manner.
- Direct to Consumer Sales: The growth in direct sales suggests authors should explore direct marketing and sales channels to enhance their earnings.

Conclusion
The conversation between Matty and Melissa provided a comprehensive overview of the current state of indie publishing, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decisions, the profitability of series, the significance of diversity and direct sales, and the positive outlook of indie authors on their publishing journey. The interview underscores the evolving landscape of indie publishing, where data, direct engagement with readers, and adaptability to market trends are crucial for success.

Transcript

Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Melissa Addy. Hey Melissa, how are you doing?

Melissa: Hey Matty, I'm doing well. Thank you for having me.

Meet Melissa Addey

Matty: It is lovely to have you here to give our listeners and viewers a little background on you. Melissa Addy is the Alliance of Independent Authors Campaigns Manager, focusing on Ethics and Excellence in Self-Publishing, as well as an author of historical fiction set in China, Morocco, and Ancient Rome. Melissa was also a past guest on the podcast in episode 150, "Hands Off Merchandising for Authors," and she was one of the contributors to my episode on "Podcasting Playbook: Navigating Guest Opportunities." That was episode 220. So, I invited Melissa back to talk about "The Big Indie Author Data Drop Report 2024."

The dearth of data related to indie publishing

Matty: So, this is something from the Alliance of Independent Authors. And I wanted to start out by asking you, Melissa, what made ALLi decide that this was something they should pursue?

Melissa: Well, it came about because there was a real dearth of data, facts, and figures on self-publishing. When I first started working with ALLi, coming from a business background, I already knew this. When I moved over into self-publishing, I wondered, "Where is the data?" In commercial life, you had to have the reports right there, and you had to have all the data in your head. If your CEO stopped you in the elevator and asked, "What are the sales like on this?" you had to have it all there, and it helped with making commercial decisions. So, I was like, "We need the data. Where is the data? How do you make proper decisions if you can't see what's happening? If it's all anecdotal, then you're never quite sure if you're just in a little bubble of your own and haven't realized what's happening on a larger scale."

Author Income Data

Melissa: And so, I started by doing the Indie Author Income Survey because one of the first things we didn't know was that we kept seeing author income surveys coming from all different parts of the world. They always indicated author income was declining. That didn't sound quite right. We were talking to many indie authors, and we also knew those surveys weren't easy for an indie author to answer because they were set up for a traditional author. Questions about your agent, your publisher, and your advance made it difficult for an indie author to participate. So, we conducted that survey last year, and the big news was that indie authors were making more money than those who were traditionally published. That was quite encouraging.

Not only were they making more, but the amount was also growing rapidly, at 53 percent year on year. That was amazing. That was ALLi's own survey, with over 2,000 authors responding. Later that same year, the Authors Guild released their figures, which absolutely correlated with ours.

So it absolutely matched that and agreed that was the case. That was a fantastic piece of information to have. Then we thought, okay, we've introduced new data, but surely there's more out there. Large organizations across self-publishing must have information, and if we compile it all together, we could have something substantial. We called this the Big Indie Author Data Drop, asking numerous organizations to share what they could. Last year's drop was amazing, providing loads of valuable data.

For example, 75 percent of books sold were in a series, both fiction and nonfiction. That's crucial information for an author to make an informed choice. Writing a standalone novel is fine—it's your creative right—but it's beneficial to know that series may be commercially advantageous. This gives you the right information to make choices. Some novels I write are standalone because that's what I want, and I'm content with that decision. However, I write others as a series because I know it's commercially smarter. Being informed in these choices is better than simply writing a standalone or series on a whim.

Last year was truly fascinating, and we've decided to conduct the Big Indie Author Data Drop annually. The income survey, however, will be every two years; it's unnecessary to do it annually when we can observe trends over time. We've just completed this year's drop in time for the London Book Fair, which has been exhausting. I wanted to share some of the fresh data that's emerged this year in various groups.

Matty: I had a question about the Income Survey, and since this was not our prepared topic, feel free to defer, but I've always imagined that if you took income information about indie authors and compared it with that of traditionally published authors, the graph for traditionally published authors would be much spikier. For example, a traditionally published author might see a large spike from an advance, followed by periods of little to no income.

I also thought it might be spikier in that a few at the top might earn vast amounts, quickly tapering off to poverty levels, which is where I would be, using magic as an analogy. Whereas for indie authors, I envisioned more of a bell curve distribution, with some earning a lot over time, others earning little, and many in the middle. Is that true? Or does your data suggest otherwise?

Melissa: That's a valid point. We tried to obtain comparable data, considering the various income surveys out there, like those from the Authors Guild, ALCS in the UK, Canada, and Australia. We aimed for alignment, ensuring that comparisons were fair. We focused on authors dedicating at least 50 percent of their time to writing and publishing. This does exclude a segment of authors, notably those who self-publish a single book, such as a memoir. We felt that including these would skew the comparison, as many people publish one-offs.

They just publish a book for their family, and that's all they ever wanted to do. And that's a difficult thing to bring into the mix. So it eliminated that and people who were just starting out because we were trying to align them to the ALCS one in the UK, which was using 50%.

The Author's Guild uses primarily full-time authors, so they report more on the full-time ones. We were trying to align somewhere like that. It is tricky to line up the data, which kind of eliminated the spike that you're talking about for the traditionally published authors. These are people who spend quite a lot of their time on this.

By this time, things like advances should have evened out a bit more because they should be getting advances, royalties, and other income streams like festivals, appearances, and book signings. That should have evened out a bit for them.

For our study, we took the median, not the mean. I had to refresh my math on this. We didn't calculate the mean, which would be to take everyone's income and distribute it back out against the number of people you had. We calculated the median, which is the middle of a range of numbers. It's the number most likely to be true for the largest group of people.

This method removes the outliers. It excludes people making multimillions and those at zero to determine what would be the most likely income for someone spending 50% of their time on this.

So, this methodology kind of evened out both aspects. It is tricky, though, really tricky to get it right. Going forward, it will be easier because we'll be able to match our data to our own, rather than comparing it to someone else's, which is always more challenging.

Thank you. I appreciate that, especially coming from someone who considers themselves non-mathematical. It's important to me that the explanation makes sense.

Matty: What were some of the most illuminating commercial insights you found that you would want to share with indie authors?

Melissa: There are three major observations I made. First, libraries are seeing a 45% increase in their revenue. For those involved with libraries, this is a significant growth area. I believe this is happening because the pathway into libraries is becoming more streamlined. Libraries are getting more accustomed to indie authors. At the beginning, there were outliers and uncertainties, but now, the process and logistics have smoothed out. Libraries are adapting to indies quickly. According to data from Draft2Digital, this is a rapidly growing area. Indie authors should explore how to get their works into libraries. That's the first point.

Melissa: The second interesting trend is the growing interest of readers in stories with diverse characters, especially among Gen Z. This younger generation is actively seeking stories that reflect their own diverse experiences and identities.

I apologize for misunderstanding your request. Here's the corrected text with direct edits for spelling, grammar, and formatting, without summarization:

Gen Zs are readers

Melissa: And I thought that was a really interesting thing to see because not only are Gen Z interested in those diverse stories, but they're really into reading. So the Gen Zs, there's been a whole spate of stories recently.

They, 40 percent of them, read every day. And I think more than 50 percent of them are reading several times a week. They like going to libraries to socialize instead of coffee shops and such. They enjoy those spaces. Possibly also because libraries, in more recent years, have really stopped being the kind of shush, shush, shush kind of place and have opened up a bit.

They have bars, they have cafes, they have spaces where you can network and talk, and nobody's going to go shush, shush, shush to you. My local library has a big networking sort of space, and they say, "Oh, we open it up for kids to come and study." So they'll come into the library, and they'll study together.

And then they're making friends and they're talking to people. And they said, it's really nice to watch that. And of course, then they're surrounded by books, and then they get more into the kind of book vibe generally. So it's quite nice to know that there's this young generation who are really into reading because presumably they're going to take that through with them, and you have to hope that the Gen Alphas that are going to be next up after them are going to continue that pathway.

So for authors, it's a fascinating thing to know that you've got an upcoming, very interested in reading group who are searching for those diverse stories. So not only do they want lots of books, but they also want them to have diverse characters in them.

Melissa: The other thing that's interesting is they like paperbacks. They want the bookiness of it. So that's interesting as well because we all went ebooks, ebooks, eBooks. They’re now kind of pushing a bit of an interest in paperbacks. And I think perhaps some of that's something to do with the physicality of it. So, things like TikTok, you have people with books in the background, holding up the books. It becomes a prop, an actual product that you talk about and interact with physically. So, I really liked that. I thought that was an interesting thing for people to think about.

And when they say diverse stories, I was chairing a panel at the London Book Fair talking with various authors about this, and it's not so much that we want diverse characters and we have to just focus on what their diversity is. It's diverse characters just doing their ordinary lives. They just want to see regular life with the diverse characters doing the regular stuff. And I think that opens it up to far more authors really because it stops being about, are you in a position to write that diverse author? Well, I am if they're running a bakery and they're just focusing on the bakery running of it.

That's what they're there for. They're not there to investigate every aspect of their diversity. They're just running their normal life. And I think that is a really important and quite positive thing for all authors to think about. Are you including diverse characters who are just getting on with their lives like the rest of your characters are doing? Put everybody in there together. That's what life's like out there. So that's a nice thing to know.

Acting on the data

Matty: It does seem like all of those are things that one would easily want to act on, such as the popularity of libraries, ensuring your books are available to libraries, and offering craft tips about diversity and evolving perspectives on what diversity means. If people are loving paperbacks, make sure they are available in paperbacks. If direct sales are proving to be popular among readers, then tap into that.

Are there any cases where you were able to look at the data in a way that said, maybe those assumptions that you would make on the surface aren't necessarily true? Or data that would lead people to say, "Oh, this is something I should be doing less of"? I recognize that might be like two questions baked into one, but something beyond the typical "Oh, I see this is popular, I'm going to do it too" response.

Behavioral aspects of indie authors (it's not what I would have expected!)

Melissa: Interesting. One thing that was interesting from the first round of data we did was about Holly Greenland, who is actually our blog manager at ALLi, doing her PhD on the behavioral aspects of self-published authors. She was trying to see if there are certain behaviors or characteristics of authors that make them more or less likely to be successful.

And the one characteristic that came up as being linked to success, so none of them were linking except for this one thing, which was not being amiable. I was like, "Sorry, what?" And she's like, "Yeah, self-published, successful authors are not amiable people." We really laughed about that, but then we kind of broke it up a bit.

We're thinking, what is that about? I mean, really, it's about having a bit of stubbornness. It's keeping going on the days when you get a crappy review or when there's another thousand words to write or the editor sent you back something and you got to do all that work.

It's keeping going. It's not always being nice. It's not always everything being sweetie pie and hunky-dory. Sometimes you got to be a bit stubborn and have a thick skin and keep plodding on. And I just thought that was quite funny sometimes. I thought on the days when you feel like you've been too abrupt with someone because you have to keep your word count or whatever.

Sometimes you have to not be as amiable, and I just thought that was a funny thing. So that was a fun one that came out.

Indie authors are positive about indie publishing

Melissa: On the whole, what was interesting was that self-published authors are very positive about self-publishing. Ninety-three percent of them were saying it is a positive experience for me.

That's a very high percentage in an area where we know it's not easy. You have to work pretty hard at it. But the positivity was a really interesting aspect for me because I thought people could say, "It's really hard" or "It takes a long time to get things moving."

But actually, the overall response and feedback on how they feel about self-publishing was very positive. So that was good to know—that it's overall a positive experience for indie authors.

Matty: What you were saying about amiability is, I think, especially funny because of any profession I've ever worked with, I think indie authors are among the most generous. So, that lack of amiability, the examples you gave totally make sense to me, but,

Melissa: On the surface, it sounds quite funny. It sounds like this must be this terrible, curmudgeonly group of people, but they're not. Like you say, they're very generous, very open-hearted about sharing what's worked for them, what they think might work for others, cheering each other on, all of that. But somewhere at the core, there must be a core of non-amiableness that keeps you going on the tough days, I think.

The other thing that's come out that's really interesting is that younger authors, the under 45s, are now making self-publishing their first choice. It is not plan B anymore. It's not, "Well, I tried traditional publishing, and it didn't work, or I couldn't get the agent, the publisher, whatever."

And the reasons why—Authors Guild found that, but also in Holly's work, she was finding that when there was a list of reasons why authors chose self-publishing, a lot of it was around creative control and the higher royalties. And "I couldn't find an agent, or I couldn't find a publisher" was really low down on the list.

That was beginning to show that actually more and more people are informed about all the options available to them and are choosing self-publishing, which is a good thing to know. This is presumably also helped by the fact that other indie authors who are already in the game are being positive about it.

Indie and trad is no longer an either/or

Matty: And I think that these kinds of collections of data will either become more complicated or less complicated depending, or maybe both. In the past, there used to be a very clear divide: indie versus traditional, or I'll even say self-publishing versus traditional. I don't like the phrase self-publishing, but that's what it was.

It was yourself or it was a company. And I think, especially as authors start doing both, you know, the idea that someone is not just an indie author, but someone who has chosen an indie route for this particular book and when the next book or series comes along, they're going to make a business decision about that book or series.

And that focus on what you're doing with a particular piece of content, not what you're doing with your entire writing career. Do you think that will make it easier or more difficult to gather and assess this kind of data?

Melissa: Well, it's harder to gather the data because, even book sales, which are still not being tracked by the big book tracking organizations, are a struggle because you can't just go by the ISBNs, just track them. Some people aren't using the ISBNs, and some people are selling direct.

So, there's a lot of lost data out there, which is a bit of a shame. On the other hand, I think as people get better at self-reporting, so they're more able to go, "Well, I do this and this and this." If you can follow what the big trends are, then you know the right questions to ask.

We now know that we need to be including that selling direct data in there, because that's going to become quite a significant part of the information out there. So that is part of why we went direct to authors, because we thought, actually, there's a lot. It's no good anymore just asking a particular platform.

A particular platform can give you a big picture of what's a big trend happening, but you will never get the full picture of what an author is making, except from that author. So, yeah, it's complicated, but if you're watching the trends, it does help you to ask the right question and hopefully to gather the right data, which is always a useful thing to do, I think.

Matty: Were there any other insights you got in addition to the treatment of diverse characters, the inclusion of diverse characters that were more craft focused? Well, I guess, in a sense, that thing about standalone versus series is sort of a combination of craft and business, just as you were saying.

Trends in KU

Melissa: Yeah, there's an ongoing thing around going wide and Kindle Unlimited, which every time I see data, I think, "Right, for once and for all, I will definitely see which way to go." And every time, it's like, "Well, there's a lot of info on this, and there's a lot of info on that." And I'm like, "Oh, listen back to it again."

I mean, on the one hand, Kindlepreneur and K-lytics both did some interesting data on Kindle Unlimited, and they were talking about how Kindle Unlimited has a lot of the big best-selling books. So when you look at the top 400 that is happening with Amazon every year, a huge and growing percentage of those are part of Kindle Unlimited. That, though, does not tell you what's kind of hot and new, which is sort of the point of Kindle Unlimited.

The power of the backlist

Melissa: The point is to have exclusivity of the new stuff that comes out. But it doesn't, of course, take care of what's happening with all the back catalogue.

And as a lot of us know, the back catalogue is where a lot of the money is in the long term, because every new book is only new for a very short period of time, and then it moves into the back catalogue, and that's got a really long running tail to it. And actually, I think indies do much better with their back catalogues because they don't just focus on that launch.

They don't go, "It's the make or break for three months and then that's it." Like, well, no, that's your launch bit. And then after that, it's got a long life. It's got a long life after you're dead. So, you know, never mind the bit where you're still alive and can look after it and make it interesting.

That would be a really interesting thing to see studies on how much money the backlist of a traditionally published author makes, maybe in comparison to an author who is in the indie ranks.

Matty: But I would bet exactly what you're saying, like, when I describe the four C's of indie publishing, they are creativity, control, care, and cash, and the care is care of the backlist, because I feel intuitively that that is true, a benefit that indie authors have over traditionally published authors, but I don't know that I've ever seen any data about that.

Melissa: No, that's an interesting one to think about. And I love the idea of back catalogs and also what happens after you're dead. I mean, we asked a whole load of it. It was part of the author income survey. And it was only a quarter of them had a will which mentioned their literary estate in any way, shape, or form.

And, you know, you think that's 70 years of sales if someone were looking after it. I do like to talk about this sort of thing. Georgette Heyer, a big romance Regency author, has been dead now for 50 years, still with 20 years left to run. If you watch how her back catalogue is being managed, it's really clever.

You see how the covers are changed regularly, how the quotes on the front, the kind of testimonials, if you like, are updated—they change up who's saying them so that it's someone new and relevant and not someone you've never heard of who apparently was a big deal back when it was first published.

Every time "Bridgerton" comes out, a new series, whoa, the sales spike for the whole of the historical category. Lord knows what they're like for Georgette Heyer. Here, they must really spike anything. Someone is doing a very good job of looking after that back catalogue, which you could have just let sink.

You could have just gone, "Well, whatever." But no, there's a lot of books there and someone's doing a really good job looking after them. And I think all indie authors should have a little bit of a think about what's going to happen later on in life and what's going to happen when they die and what will happen to their literary estate.

And go have a look at Georgette Heyer. Go see how well you can look after a series and what kind of money that might make for your estate. I think it's...

Matty: I think it was a conversation that I either had with Orna or Michael LaRon about this very thing, and I was saying it seems as if there's a maybe newish profession within the indie author sphere of people whose entire job is to take care of your books either after you've died or maybe even just after you've stopped wanting to muck around in it, and you want somebody else to take care of it, kind of like an agent.

I actually just talked to David Morris, who is an agent, but he's a very forward-thinking agent who is welcoming of what the indie publishing industry brings, and I think that he's doing somewhat different things for his clients, depending on what their publishing approach is, obviously, but that there is this specialty of taking care of books after the author is either not there anymore to do it themselves or just not interested in doing it themselves anymore.

Melissa: Yeah. Oh, I think there's a lot of scope for that and I don't think it's quite taken off yet, but like you say, it should really. At ALLi, we have two books for our members which are all about how to write that literary estate and a sort of handbook for your heirs to go here.

This is what you do when someone leaves you a pile of books and you're supposed to take care of them. But I think that's definitely a publishing service that could develop because when you get older and you semi-retire, you should write yourself a kind of process Bible that says, this is how often you should update the covers, this is the target audience.

The power of a solid foundation

Matty: Well, there was one other, I'm going to hold it for the moment because I think it would be a good wrap-up comment, but were there any other things that struck you and especially things that you saw losing popularity in the sense that you would want to alert indie authors that maybe this is something that they shouldn't be keeping at the top of their priority list anymore?

Melissa: That's a good question. I have not seen things going down. It just all goes up to do more and more things all the time. I said this to one of them the other day, and I was like, "There's always something else to do." And yes, there is always something else to do.

I have not seen anything really going down. I think, and you sort of slightly touched on that just before. I think authors who grow find more and more interesting income streams and platforms and outlets for what they're doing, and not only do they find things like, you know, at the beginning, we say to everyone, you must have a mailing list.

You must have subscribers. You must, you know, and at the beginning, it may seem like, well, I'm not sure they're really doing anything. This doesn't seem to be whatever, but actually, Kindlepreneur showed that selling direct was a lot better the more subscribers you had on your list. They literally had a chart showing you have this many subscribers.

You get this much money. You have this many subscribers. So that was an interesting one. and then also, I think, things like Kickstarter and Patreon become bigger the more you're linking, the more you've got those subscribers, the more you've got those different projects to play with. And then you start getting into, as you were saying, what do you do with each book that comes out or each series that comes out?

What pathway do you take for it? And it isn't even just Shall I go trad, or shall I go indie? It's even more split up than that. It's what shall I do with the paperback? What shall I do with the audiobook? What shall I do with? And it's each individual format you can tease out more and more into all its different component parts and think to yourself, what happens to the licensing rights for each one of those?

Do I look after them? Do I hand them over to someone else? Shall I do, you know, and that, that means that the more successful you are, the more options you have to split out into those tiny parts. Rather than the old model of here, you have everything, and you sort it out. That's a really old model now.

I don't think many people do that anymore. And certainly not the successful people. They're really splitting it down to the fine details, and each one of those, they're considering, would it be better this route, or would it be better that route? And I think that is where the success comes from is really thinking through all your options for each potential, you know, creative use of that IP.

Acting on the data

Matty: Yeah, I think this idea that every report seems to put more work on the indie publisher's plate and not take much away is just the nature of a still maturing and growing career in the industry. But I can see an analogy where, you know, I think we've gotten past the point where, and this is one of the reasons I don't like the term 'self-publishing,' because it sounds like a terrible thing.

You're doing it all yourself. And I think most professional indie publishers now recognize that they are wordsmiths, not visual design professionals. So, they should really get a visual design professional to produce their cover. Nobody can effectively edit their own work.

So they really need to get a professional editor. I know for myself, I just know I'm not a numbers person. So I finally got to a point with my business where I said, I'm just going to hire somebody else to take care of it for me because I recognize I'm never going to be able to handle that side of things as effectively as I could.

And I think that what is now a growing pool of data sort of suggests another area where people maybe need more help because I see lots of pieces of data about this is becoming more popular, this is becoming less popular, 57 percent of authors are doing such and such. And a lot of times my response is, that's fascinating, but I have no idea how to act on that.

Beyond the obvious things like, oh, yeah, I should still offer a paperback book. And, you know, this is another way I can imagine there could be an evolving profession out there that is, I'm looking at the pool of data and now I'm boiling it down for you and I'm saying, you know, I understand the details, but this is how you should act on it.

Do you have recommendations for people who are looking, not just to understand the data better, but then to understand how they should be acting on it?

Melissa: Well, two things. One is, download the report that we've done and have a look at it because we've made it so readable. It is very, very readable. It is, lots of pictures. That sounds so patronizing. No, but it's broken up. It is not a report that just goes on and on and you're going, "Where is the bit that I'm supposed to..." it's not like that.

It's very much, here's a headline figure, have a think about that now. There's another headline thing. Think about that now. And it's very much designed to be very readable and to take stuff away from it, clear directions from it. Not just go, "Lots of things are happening. Oh my God, that means there's lots more things to do."

Seeing the bigger picture (not just the shiny objects)

Melissa: The other thing I think is really important for all indie authors is to know where you're at and to do the bit that's appropriate for where you're at. I meet people and they're like, "Oh my God, they've only just started and they go, 'Oh my God, all the things that you've done.' And I'm like, but I've been doing this for nine years, nine years."

So if you're looking at my stuff and starting to panic, and I'm not even the superstars, you shouldn't be panicking because I had one book and I had 12 subscribers on my list, and one of them was my dad, and then he unsubscribed like, hello. And you know, it looks all swish when you look at the people ahead of you, you need to slow it down a little bit and do a little bit at a time. But if you have the guidance, it does help you because if you know, if right away you get told it would be helpful to you to write in a series. So just consider that each time you sit down with a new book, think about whether it could be a series.

From a creative point of view, do whatever you like, but know that this would be beneficial to you. And then, you know, know that it's good to have a mailing list and subscribers. When someone then says, "Well, you should be selling direct," and you think, "Oh my God, that's another thing that I need to set up."

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If it's panicking you, wait a little bit because the logistics will get smoother as they always do when something new comes in. And also, while the logistics are getting smoother, you can be building up your subscribers and your books, which the Kindlepreneur people have clearly shown will make it a lot easier when you go into the direct sale.

So rather than panic and think you must do everything, think about where am I at right now? What would be the best thing for me to be putting in place so that when I get to that next bit, it will make it easier for me? I always, you know, when I talk to brand new authors, I'm always like, "Let's get the foundations right."

Do not go rushing off and trying to do something that you think looks all shiny and whatever. Let's get the foundations right because then when you stand on those, they'll be nice and solid under you. Don't build some crumbly plastic thing, build something good and solid with bricks, you know, and then it will be easier at the next level.

And I think that happens all the way through. We are all guilty of, I do all the time, you look at the people up, up, up, up, up above you and you go, "Oh my God, how did they do that? Oh, oh, and I'm never going to catch up. Oh, and I should do all these things." But actually just think about where you've got to so far.

And, logically, what would be the next good thing to, to move up to? I do like having data because otherwise, I think you, you're just looking at the shiny stuff and you think you need to do all of that immediately. If you have the data in front of you, you can go, "Okay, it looks like that's a good thing to be doing. How would I get one step closer to that?"

Matty: Yeah. My author friends will laugh because I'm currently on a campaign to get people to stop saying "just," and one of them is, "I'm just going to self-publish it." And I was like, okay, that pains me for so many reasons. But the other thing I hear is that I think that we're surrounded by the superstar stories.

And if we're talking about email newsletter subscribers, then, you know, the "I only have 12 subscribers," it's, no, you have 12 subscribers. You can't expect to sell a thousand books off the 12 subscribers, but, you know, you have 12 subscribers, and I've even heard people saying like, "Oh, I only have 15,000 subscribers," and I'm like, That really makes me feel like lying down and taking a nap, you know, because now, it's like inciting comparisonitis. Now you've seen what the superstar is doing, and you think, "Oh, well, obviously I should have 15,000 subscribers," and so, I think a real benefit of having the data and not just the window dressing can really help people make more realistic assessments of their career and where they want to head it.

Melissa: Yes, yes, I think so. And I think that it allows you to see the bigger picture, to go, "Okay, this is what's happening, you know, the median amount of money is this. Okay, where do I stand in relation to that? What does it look like those authors are doing? And what could I do to move forward? Closer towards that."

It's just a little bit at a time. People always have a funny way of looking at being an author compared to any other job. And I'm always like, but it's like any other job. You don't take someone straight out of school, stuff them in a job and then come back a year later and go, "Why are you not the CEO?"

Why would you be the CEO? You're making coffee for everyone and doing what you're told and doing the photocopying, you know. After a bit you'll get a little bit better and a little bit better and if I come back in 10 years then it would be reasonable to say, "How are you getting on and have you been promoted a couple of times and what have you got your eye on for the future?"

I don't expect to come back and hear that you're the CEO because even after 10 years that'd be something. I mean, you have to have a sense of comparing it to a real job. It's a real job. It's not, we have too many shiny star stories, I think, and not enough middle stories. I like the middle stories.

I like the ones where you're making the same money you were making in whatever job it was you did before you became an indie author. To me, that is a big success story because you managed to equal or go above that salary. That's great. The super million whatevers, I mean, that's wonderful too, but that's a whole other thing. It's about is it a real job? The more you think of it as a real job, the better.

Matty: And I think that people should separate in their minds the aspirational goals without denigrating what they've done. So if you have 12 email subscribers, then of course you probably want 20, but you shouldn't be denigrating the fact that you have 12 on your way to...

Melissa: And also, yeah, but also the fact that you have 12, that means you must have set up a website and a mailing list and you got some people to sign up. You've probably got some kind of reader magnet or something that's getting them onto that list because they don't just sign up for nothing. So actually that must mean an awful lot of your foundational stones are getting in place because otherwise that wouldn't have happened at all, and I think you panic less over time.

Matty: Yes, we've morphed from data discussion to therapy for independent publishers.

Melissa: There should be a podcast that is therapy published on this. There really should be.

Matty: Today's caller is worried that they only have 15,000 email subscribers.

Melissa: Yeah, today's caller is crying because their dad doesn't subscribe from their 12 subscribers. We have to talk them down, you know.

Matty: Well, Melissa, always so lovely to talk to you, as I think our listeners can tell, and I'm sure people are going to be intrigued by this report, so where can they go to download their own copy of the report?

Melissa: Absolutely, so it's at allianceindependentauthors.org/facts and you will find there both the very latest one but also scroll down the page a little bit further you'll see notices to it and get last year's one as well because we tried not to repeat, we didn't just repeat the data, we put all new data and last year's one is just as worth reading as this year's.

Matty: Thank you so much.

Melissa: Thank you, Matty. Always a pleasure.

Matty Dalrymple 5/7/24 Matty Dalrymple 5/7/24

Episode 237 - Creating Your Own Community with Jessie Kwak

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Jessie Kwak discusses CREATING YOUR OWN COMMUNITY. Our conversation was triggered by the fact that Jessie recently hosted the first Author Alchemy Summit, and I wanted to find out what had made her decide to dive into this huge community-building undertaking. But even if organizing your own conference isn’t on your bucket list, the best practices she shares are generalizable to all sorts of other big projects that might be on your wish list: testing your commitment to a major undertaking, the importance of engaging a team of helpers, the challenge of delegation, battling imposter syndrome, gathering supporters and offering them opportunities (rather than asking for favors), achieving balance with the rest of your work, the importance of avoiding task-switching, and following the flow of your energy. I also think that hearing about what is involved in being a conference organizer can help us be better (and more empathetic) conference attendees, but Jessie also offers some great practical tips for us as attendees, including how to find the conferences that best meet our goals and networking for introverts.

Jessie Kwak is an author and business book ghostwriter living in Portland, Oregon. When she’s not writing, she can be found sewing, mountain biking, or out exploring new worlds both at home and abroad. She is the author of a supernatural thriller, two series of space scoundrel sci-fi crime novels, and a handful of productivity books including From Chaos to Creativity and From Big Idea to Book.

Episode Links

Jessie's Links:
https://www.jessiekwak.com/
https://www.instagram.com/kwakjessie/
https://bsky.app/profile/kwakjessie.bsky.social
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC29MGqlb0BZ7eDOxcd0-ENA

Jessie's Previous Podcast Appearances:
Episode 132 - From Big Idea to Book with Jessie Kwak
Episode 179 - Is Freelance Copywriting for You? with Jessie Kwak

Companion Episodes:Episode 155 - The Benefits (and Costs) of Membership with Roland Denzel
Inbetweenisode 116 - Creating Community, Content, and Creative Energy with Jeff Elkins
Episode 039 - Building a Writer Community with Connie Johnson Hambley

Summary

The episode features a conversation between Matty Dalrymple, the host of The Indy Author Podcast, and Jessie Kwak, an author and conference organizer. Jessie discusses her experiences in organizing the Author Alchemy Summit, a conference focused on the business side of writing, particularly on connecting directly with readers. The summit was described as a small, intimate gathering in Portland, Oregon, designed to foster community and networking among writers.

Jessie's motivation for organizing her own conference stemmed from her dissatisfaction with existing events, which she found either too large and impersonal or too narrowly focused on craft rather than business. She aimed to fill this gap with a conference that balanced community, networking, and educational content, specifically tailored to authors interested in the business aspects of their career.

One key theme of the conversation is the importance of understanding your goals when selecting or creating a conference. Jessie emphasizes that knowing what you want to get out of a conference can guide you in choosing or organizing one that meets your needs. This clarity of purpose helps in creating a focused and valuable experience for attendees.

Jessie shares the challenges she faced in organizing the summit, including dealing with imposter syndrome, the difficulty of delegation, and the intricacies of marketing and logistics. She underscores the value of community support and feedback in refining her ideas and gaining the confidence to proceed. Jessie's narrative illustrates the iterative process of organizing a successful event, highlighting how each conversation and piece of feedback helped her to refine her vision and execution.

The discussion also touches on the practical aspects of conference organization, like the selection of speakers and sponsors. Jessie's approach to gathering speakers was rooted in her existing network, prioritizing individuals likely to contribute meaningfully to the conference theme. She candidly discusses her struggle with approaching sponsors, eventually realizing that she was offering valuable advertising opportunities rather than merely seeking financial support.

Balancing the demands of organizing the conference with her other professional responsibilities was another significant challenge. Jessie's strategy involved focused blocks of time dedicated to different tasks, which helped manage her workload and maintain productivity. This approach also helped her manage the psychological demands of switching between tasks and roles.

Networking for introverts is highlighted, with Jessie sharing strategies to create an environment conducive to natural, comfortable interactions. She stresses the importance of structured yet relaxed settings that encourage engagement among attendees.

In conclusion, the conversation encapsulates the multifaceted nature of organizing a conference, from conceptualization to execution. It reflects on the personal growth and community building inherent in such endeavors, offering insights and advice for others considering similar projects. Jessie’s experiences illustrate the complexities of creating an event that balances educational content with networking opportunities, all while managing the logistical and emotional challenges involved.

Transcript

Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Jessie Kwak. Hey Jessie, how are you doing?

Jessie: Hey, I'm doing great.

Matty: I am pleased to have you back and to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Jessie Kwak is an author and business book ghostwriter living in Portland, Oregon. When she’s not writing, she can be found sewing, mountain biking, or out exploring new worlds both at home and abroad. She is the author of a supernatural thriller, two series of space scoundrel sci-fi crime novels, and a handful of productivity books including “From Chaos to Creativity” and “From Big Idea to Book.” In fact, Jessie was a guest back in episode 132, talking about "From Big Idea to Book." She has also been on episode 179, "Is Freelance Copywriting for You?"

And to that biography, we can now add Conference Organizer. That's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be talking about creating your own community. I had two reasons behind inviting Jessie here. One was that I think it would be interesting for conference attendees to see what goes into creating a conference. But I also think that this whole idea of taking that step to create your own community is really generalizable beyond the specifics of conferences. So we're going to be covering both those aspects, some that are more conference organizational specific, and some that are more generalizable to creating one's own community in general.

The background of Jessie's conference, the Author Alchemy Summit

Matty: So, Jessie, let's start with a description of the conference that you organized.

Jessie: Yeah, the Author Alchemy Summit was held here in Portland, Oregon about three weeks ago from when we're recording this. It was the end of February. It was a small, kind of intimate conference. There were about 60 people there, including speakers and staff. The focus was entirely on the business of writing, specifically on how to connect directly with your readers. I used that question as a focal point because we could have talked about anything from ads to newsletters to craft. I thought, if we have a single track of programming in a small community, we really need a focus. To me, connecting directly with your readers is a question that many authors are trying to figure out these days.

What made Jessie decide to organize a new conference?

Matty: What made you decide to start your own conference versus looking through the available suite of conferences for one you could attend as an attendee?

Jessie: Yeah, I attend a lot of conferences and I really enjoy it. I love the community, I love networking, and I've been to a lot of the bigger ones. I've been to 20 Books in Vegas, which is, of course, probably about the biggest conference you can get into as a writer. Then I've been to some very small ones, like local writing retreats or craft-focused critique group sorts of things. I didn't find a lot that was really in this middle ground, under a hundred people, really focused tightly on networking and community as well as having a high level of educational content. It's been very hard for me to find one that's so business focused.

A lot of conferences, at least in the Pacific Northwest, tend to be more focused on craft and writing, or they're very genre-oriented, like we have some great local sci-fi cons and horror cons. But as far as something that was of that size, focused on community and really on the business aspect, there just wasn't anything like that in the Pacific Northwest.

How can attendees find the conferences that best meet their goals?

Matty: This is a good opportunity to talk about how conference attendees can benefit from this conversation. When you were researching conferences, you were looking for what you just described and weren't finding it. When people are looking for conferences that are a good match for what they want, do you have any transferable advice?

Jessie: Knowing what your goal is the first step. Are you looking to pitch to agents? You won't find that at an indie conference; you'll want to look for a more traditionally focused conference. Are you looking for a wide variety of topics? You won't find that at a small conference, but you might not find as much networking opportunity at a bigger conference as you would at a smaller one. So, know your goals, and then talk to people who have attended in the past. That's a great way to get an idea of whether a conference is for you, whether it's going to be valuable for your genre or career path, whether you're indie or traditional.

What is the vibe like? Some conferences have been around for a while and can be a little hard to break into as a new person. Everyone already knows each other, and it's hard to know who to talk to. Talking to past attendees can be really valuable to get a sense of the vibe.

Testing your commitment to a big undertaking

Matty: Let's talk through the logistics of setting this up. Describe how you went from not finding what you needed to deciding to put on a show.

Jessie: I tapped into my network and started asking anyone I knew who had conference organizing experience to talk me through the steps and try to talk me out of it. I wanted to be talked out of it. I'd say, "Let me tell you my idea, and please poke as many holes as you can in it." I hoped to leave these conversations relieved that I didn't have to organize a conference and could just keep writing my books. But with every conversation, I kept clarifying my idea and thinking, "No, this sounds great; this sounds doable, actually."

And in the end, after talking to enough people, I decided to put down a payment on this event space. Once I did that, I was committed.

Matty: Yeah, I think that's obviously generalizable advice. Anytime you're considering a big leap that's going to require a lot of time, money, effort, or any significant resource, it's a good idea to go to knowledgeable people and ask them to talk you out of it. Going in with the mindset to be persuaded not to do it can be revealing. For certain personalities, the first reason not to proceed might deter them. But this process can really solidify your commitment if you decide to go ahead.

So, what was it like to take that step where you were completely committed?

Jessie: Oh, it was scary. The hardest part was just getting to the point where I was ready to sign the contract. I had to be mindful of potential pitfalls in the contract. Fortunately, I had a local friend who organizes a more traditional writers conference, and I asked them to review the hotel contract to ensure there were no hidden clauses. That was incredibly valuable and confidence-building. But once I paid the deposit, I felt like I had to learn how to market a conference. So, it was very much a process of building the conference as I went along.

Engaging a team of helpers

Matty: And obviously, you weren't doing this on your own. You've mentioned tapping into experts. Did it boil down to you being the sole organizer and consulting experts, or did you assemble a more active team of helpers?

Jessie: Essentially, I was the sole organizer seeking expertise. My husband contributed quite a bit, especially toward the end. He was also my sounding board throughout the process, but he acted as the logistic coordinator during the event, which allowed me to focus on networking, moderating panels, and taking care of the speakers. If someone had a question about the schedule, Rob was there to handle it, which was great.

Another person I brought onto my team was my next-door neighbor, Lydia, who managed the catering for us. She's very organized and considerate, paying attention to details like allergies and dietary restrictions. When I asked her to be the catering director, she accepted, and a few days later, she came over with spreadsheets and a Pinterest board full of ideas for food presentation. I knew then that I had chosen the right person.

The challenge of delegation

Matty: It seems like you lucked into two good helpers there. Did delegating that kind of work come naturally to you, or was it something you struggled with?

Jessie: Delegating is really hard for me, especially in this case because I often didn't know what I needed. People would ask, "What can I help you with?" and I didn't know what to tell them since I was figuring things out as I went. For the second event in 2025, it'll be easier to delegate because I now understand the tasks involved in each project. But the first time around, it was very difficult to delegate when I was still feeling my way through the process.

Matty: There are analogies here for a writer getting ready to publish a book; they have to understand book cover design or the editorial world. You've got to get your feet wet to fully understand what's involved and what you can and cannot comfortably delegate.

Jessie: Exactly, once you've played around with something for a bit, you can decide what you no longer need to do yourself, like updating a website, and can hire a virtual assistant. But until you've done it once, you don't know how to explain it to someone else. Once you do, and you find yourself repeating the task, that's the time to delegate.

Battling imposter syndrome

Matty: Were there any parts in the planning process that were more or less difficult than you expected?

Jessie: Setting up the schedule was emotionally fraught for me. I had a great lineup of speakers, but deciding on the panels and schedule was tough. I suffered from imposter syndrome, questioning my authority to make these decisions. I mentioned this to my husband, and he reminded me that as the conference organizer, I am indeed the one to make these decisions. That helped, but it still took me a while to finalize the schedule because I was caught up in my own doubts for some time.

Matty: Yeah, I can imagine for any of these big endeavors, like organizing a conference, it would be helpful for people to rehearse ahead of time. For instance, "I'm going to be talking to this big-name author, and then I will have to tell them, ask them, or insist on something." Do I feel comfortable about that? Both intellectually comfortable — I guess I am the organizer — and also psychically comfortable, just like what you were saying.

Jessie: Yeah, I read something the other day in a newsletter from a copywriter whose newsletter I subscribe to. He was talking about how ego can really get in your way of putting yourself out there. Normally, we think of ego in terms of, "I think I'm so great," which is more of the hubris side of ego. But he said what often trips people up is the flip side of ego, which is you thinking about yourself and worrying about what people think of you, when really everyone is thinking about themselves and not about you. So when you're going to a conference, many people worry, "What will I say if somebody asks me this?" or "What will people think about this?" Honestly, nobody's really thinking that much about you. I was so tripped up on my own ego, worrying about what people would think of my decisions when, in reality, people were just excited about the conference. They weren't concerned about the specifics of my decision-making.

Matty: Where does she get off?

Jessie: Yeah.

Gathering speakers

Matty: I was also curious about how you ended up with the speakers. In other situations, there might be two ways of going about it. One is "I've developed this network of people who know a lot about X, and I'd love to get them together to do a conference about X." The other is "I want to do a conference about X, and now I'm looking among my network of people to see who could contribute to that." Does one of those sound more like what you did for your conference?

Jessie: My approach was definitely more the first one. I looked at my network and thought about who I could ask that would probably say yes or at least entertain the idea. So, I started with whom I knew, compiled those people, and then built the conference around them. One thing I will do differently next year is think more about the schedule and the topics I want to cover and then find the people to fill those roles. Now that I've established this event, I can point to it and say, "Here, I did this thing, here are some rave reviews. Would you like to come?" Some people have reached out, saying, "Oh, I'd love to be invited next year," which is a really great place to be in. But yes, I definitely started with who I knew that might say yes.

Matty: And did you have to adjust your ego in order to approach those people you wanted to involve?

Jessie: Oh my gosh, yes. That was one of the scariest parts — that and emailing sponsors to ask about sponsorships. I would put off those emails for hours, even days. I'd be in cold sweats just thinking about emailing someone to invite them to my conference. Again, like you said, that was my ego getting in the way, making me worry about what they would think of the invitation.

And my husband's in sales, so he was just like, "People get these kinds of requests a lot. They move on and don't think about you again. They're not upset with you." He was like, "Why are you so worried about asking sponsors for money? That's what they do."

Matty: Did you have to take a different approach between organizations you were requesting sponsorships from and speakers you were expressing interest in as speakers?

Offering opportunities (not asking for favors)

Jessie: Definitely, I think the sponsorship was harder for me because it was straight-up asking for money. I'm thinking, "Who am I, what am I offering you?" But with the speakers, I felt a bit more like I was inviting them to an opportunity, and we were all going to get something out of it. I had to adjust my mindset with sponsors as well because I wasn't asking for a handout; I was selling advertising. Once I reframed it as selling advertising instead of asking for money, it felt very different, and that's what helped me get over that hurdle.

Matty: Yeah, that's clearly very generalizable. I know promotional work isn't super comfortable for anyone, but if you think of it as getting what you have to offer in front of people who could benefit from it, it not only makes it easier to see the value on both sides but also helps you identify your target audience. If you're mentally preparing a pitch and can't clearly define the benefit to them, then maybe you're not pitching to the right group. The same goes for presenting your book to an audience; if it feels like a mismatch, then it might actually be one.

Jessie: Right, whether it's a partnership or a book sale, it should be about the benefit to your audience, not asking for favors. People get hung up because they feel like they're asking for favors when they're not. You're a business owner providing a service. That service is entertaining and educational books. If your message isn't resonating with your audience, there's a mismatch. It's not about begging more; it's about selling. It's a mindset shift.

Achieving balance with a huge project

Matty: One thing people can empathize with is what happens when you take on a huge project and you don't have 20 spare hours a week. You're having to balance this with everything else on your plate. How did you do that, especially since you have a ghostwriting, copywriting business, and you're doing work for yourself and others?

Jessie: Yeah, that was tough to balance. I definitely didn't get as much writing done last year as I wanted to, which... Yeah. So, that was something I had to ask myself from time to time, especially when I had an injury last year and had a rough patch. I knew going back to things, I only had room for one project. Was it organizing this conference? People would understand if I called it off. Or was it writing the next book in my series? The value of bringing all these people together and doing something for the community, which supported me during that rough patch, won out over finishing the book. So, I didn't do it all. It's been a year since I finished my last book, and I'm still on act two of my current one. It's about setting priorities and figuring out what is the most important draw for you and why it is so valuable.

Avoid task-switching

Jessie: But in terms of actual productivity and balance, I tried to focus. I'd be like, "Okay, today is a conference day. Tomorrow, I'll work on this one client project." I work better when I'm not bouncing around and instead focusing on one project at a time. So, with the conference, I'd segment it out by days, as much as I could. For example, I only took meetings on Tuesdays and worked on my fiction on Fridays, setting myself that schedule.

Matty: I'm definitely a proponent of avoiding task-switching as much as possible. Looking back at my corporate life, I realize how inefficient it is to switch tasks every 15 minutes. Once I started working for myself and could segment my time as I wanted, I became much more efficient. Now, I'm always experimenting with the perfect duration for chunks of time. Is it an hour? Half a day? A whole day? A week? I'm currently juggling a nonfiction book I didn't plan to have take up all my time, but I got into a situation where the words were coming easily. Every morning, I would get my tea and think, "Do I go back to my fiction book, which I'm excited about, or do I continue with this nonfiction because it's flowing easily?" Those decisions about how to allocate and then chunk out time are crucial. As you said, today might be just for conference stuff, but tomorrow will be for fiction writing.

Jessie: Yeah, to your point about following the flow of your energy, that's one of the most productive things you can do, especially if you have control over your schedule and don't have to switch tasks abruptly. While I set myself schedules, aside from only taking meetings one or two days a week, I keep things flexible. If I wake up brimming with ideas for essays for my newsletter, I prioritize writing them. It's most efficient to let the words out when they're eager to come. Following the energy flow is key, but it's also important to balance that. Sometimes I might neglect emails while riding that energy wave, so I have to remind myself to dedicate time to clearing my inbox.

Networking for introverts

Matty: Another thing I know you planned carefully for your conference was emphasizing community building for a group that included many introverts. How did you make the environment comfortable for them?

Jessie: Networking for introverts is a topic I'm often asked about. I'm an introvert but have trained myself to network effectively. I understand it can be daunting for people who are new to networking or introverted. At the conference, I wanted to foster an environment where conversations could spark naturally. We had a happy hour before the conference where people could socialize and pick up their packets. I had a few outgoing individuals tasked with engaging anyone who was alone, and I did a lot of that myself. My husband and Lydia handled logistics, so I could focus on mingling and introducing attendees to each other, facilitating connections based on common interests.

For meals, I know how isolating it can be to look for someone to lunch with at a conference. To avoid this, we catered breakfast and lunch right in the event space.

Jessie: People could show up early, grab a bagel or yogurt, and often they'd sit in the same place at the table, getting a chance to talk with their tablemates or meet someone new. After the breakout sessions before lunch, discussions could continue over food, which was ready to go. This eliminated the need for attendees to figure out where to go for lunch or deal with reservations. Making meals convenient and in the event space was critical.

Matty: There are two lessons here beyond conferences. One is finding helpers to manage logistics, allowing you to focus on strategic aspects like introductions and pairing people up. This is similar to indie authors delegating tasks like book cover design to professionals so they can focus on their strengths. The second lesson is the importance of experience. Just as you have to read a lot of books to write one, attending many conferences gives you insights into organizing your own. If you hadn't had those experiences as an attendee, you wouldn't know what to consider for your conference.

Jessie: Right. When I started organizing, I asked everyone I knew who had organized a conference. I quizzed people about their conference experiences and sent out surveys. When someone joined the marketing list for the conference, they received a survey about their preferences and experiences at other conferences. I continually sought other people's experiences. As writers, especially in fiction, we provide readers with new experiences and perspectives. Similarly, if you're unfamiliar with something, like finding an editor or writing a certain character, there are many resources available. You can tap into your network, email experts, or follow them for insights. There are ways to learn how to do something if you listen and seek out information.

Matty: I wanted to circle back to the idea of community. You went into this with a robust community, as evidenced by your ability to tap into them for speakers and attendees, and now you probably have an even bigger network. Do you have any tips for capitalizing on that expanded community for your own benefit and for the benefit of the new people in your community? Maybe it's paving the way for the next conference or helping out in other ways. Are there tips you can share about how to keep those relationships vital after an event?

Jessie: One of the things people often don't do after an event is follow up with the people they met. You might exchange business cards or emails, but many don't send that follow-up email. I often tell people at conferences, if you ever have questions or want to chat, I'm happy to Zoom with you, and very few actually take me up on that offer. We tend to get home from an event and think everyone is busy or they were just being polite. My advice for expanding your community after an event is to actually follow up. Take people at their word. If they say they’d love to meet for coffee or answer questions via email, take advantage of it. Email them.

Matty: That’s great advice. You and I, along with some other attendees of 20 Books, have kept in touch, which has been very valuable to me for a number of reasons. So, I'm a big fan of that. Jessie, thank you so much for sharing all those perspectives. Please let the listeners and viewers know where they can find out more about you, your upcoming conference, and everything else you do online.

Jessie: Thank you so much, this has been a great conversation. You can find more about me at jessiekwak.com. That's J-E-S-S-I-E-K-W-A-K.com. That will have links to the Author Alchemy Summit website. The dates for next year are now set: February 14th through 16th, 2025.

Matty: Great, thank you so much.

Jessie: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Matty Dalrymple 4/30/24 Matty Dalrymple 4/30/24

Episode 236 - Creating Character Motivation: The Fallacy of Magical Knowing with Tiffany Yates Martin

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Tiffany Yates Martin discusses CREATING CHARACTER MOTIVATION: THE FALLACY OF MAGICAL KNOWING, including an explanation of what "magical knowing" is, what leads a writer to fall back on it, and the signs that you're relying on it; the importance of understanding the character's overarching goal and of laying in brushstrokes of both context and specifics; the challenge of finding balance; the power of dissecting your own story and the value of outside eyes; and the pitfalls of "magical ignorance."

Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers. She is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial and author of INTUITIVE EDITING: A CREATIVE AND PRACTICAL GUIDE TO REVISING YOUR WRITING. She is a regular contributor to Writer’s Digest, Jane Friedman, and Writer Unboxed, and a frequent presenter and keynote speaker for writers’ organizations around the country. Under her pen name, Phoebe Fox, she is the author of six novels.

Episode Links

Tiffany's Links
https://foxprinteditorial.com/
https://www.facebook.com/tiffanynyates/
https://www.instagram.com/tiffanyyatesmartin/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ-TMebXV5sg8-fQkVeg_0w

Past Podcast Appearances:Episode 152 - The Three Stages of Story with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 112 - Being the Captain of Your Author Voyage with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 065 - X-raying Your Plot with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 053 - What Authors can Learn from TV and Movies with Tiffany Yates Martin

Summary

In The Indy Author Podcast hosted by Matty Dalrymple, guest Tiffany Yates Martin, an experienced editor and author, discusses the concept of "magical knowing" in writing and its implications for character development. Tiffany explains that magical knowing is a narrative shortcut where characters suddenly understand or realize something without the narrative groundwork that logically leads to that knowledge. This can occur in any genre, from detective stories to romances, and often stems from an author’s desire not to over-explain or from their intimate knowledge of the story, which may not fully translate to the reader.

Tiffany emphasizes the importance of showing how characters come to their thoughts, feelings, or realizations, likening it to showing one's work in a math problem. She suggests that authors should avoid leaps in logic and instead provide specific, detailed groundwork that allows the reader to understand and believe in the character's journey. This includes exploring the character's motivations, desires, and the personal stakes involved in their actions and decisions.

The discussion moves into the necessity of external and internal motivations for characters, highlighting the need for clear, believable reasons behind their actions. For example, in a detective story, rather than having the detective simply "know" who the culprit is, the narrative should provide tangible clues and reasoning that lead to this conclusion.

Matty discusses her experiences and challenges with magical knowing in her own writing, exploring how she has worked to identify and rectify it in her manuscripts. Tiffany highlights the role of external feedback, such as beta readers, critique partners, and editors, in identifying areas where the narrative may rely too heavily on magical knowing.

Additionally, the conversation covers the concept of "magical ignorance," where characters are inexplicably unaware of something obvious to the reader. Tiffany advises that authors should carefully lay out the reasons why a character may have certain blind spots or misunderstandings, thereby preventing the narrative from appearing contrived or forced.

Towards the end of the discussion, Tiffany and Matty delve into the editing and revision process, where much of the work on addressing magical knowing takes place. They discuss the importance of questioning every aspect of the character's journey to ensure logical consistency and emotional authenticity.

Tiffany also touches on the difficulty of letting go of beloved story elements that don't serve the narrative's coherence or believability, stressing the value of being open to change and reevaluation during the editing process.

The conversation concludes with Tiffany highlighting resources available for writers seeking to improve their craft and avoid pitfalls like magical knowing, pointing to her work and online platforms as valuable tools for authors.

Overall, the discussion emphasizes the critical importance of well-grounded character motivations and development in creating compelling, believable narratives. Authors are encouraged to meticulously examine their characters' motivations and actions to ensure they are convincingly portrayed and logically consistent throughout the story.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Tiffany Yates Martin. Hey, Tiffany, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Tiffany: Hi Matty. Good, how are you?

[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. To give our listeners and viewers a little background on you, Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly 30 years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and "New York Times," "Washington Post," "Wall Street Journal," and "USA Today" bestselling, and award-winning authors, as well as indie and newer writers. She's the founder of Fox Print Editorial and the author of "Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing." She's a contributor to "Writer's Digest," "Jane Friedman," and "Writer Unboxed," and a frequent presenter and keynote speaker for writers' organizations around the country. Under her pen name, Phoebe Fox, she's the author of six novels.

And she's been my guest a ton of times on the podcast, so I'm going to include links to all of those in the show notes. Every time Tiffany does one of those presentations or writes one of those articles or sends me a blog post, I always think that would be a great topic for a podcast interview. But one came across my PC that I was just so intrigued with that I invited Tiffany back to talk about it, and it is "Creating Character Motivation: The Fallacy of Magical Knowing." And I thought a good way to start this out would be to ask you, Tiffany, to explain what you mean by magical knowing.

What is “magical knowing”?

[00:01:13] Tiffany: First, thanks for that great introduction, and I was hoping you were going to mention that I'm what, a five-timer now?

[00:01:19] Matty: You are a five-timer. I don't think that even includes the contributions you made to my "Perspectives On" episode.

[00:01:26] Tiffany: Oh, those were fun. Yeah, I want my "Saturday Night Live" five-timer jacket.

[00:01:30] Matty: Yay. You, Dale Roberts, and Michael Aran are vying for the jacket at the moment.

...

[00:01:40] Matty: What is "magical knowing"?

[00:01:42] Tiffany: I see it in manuscripts, not a lot, but it's an author shortcut where rather than showing on the page why a character thinks something, feels something, reacts in a certain way, or has a realization, they just know. Something tells her she could trust him, or suddenly she realized she'd loved him all along. It usually looks something like that, where it's an unsupported shift in the character that we haven't seen on the page.

[00:02:21] Matty: I think that the way I see this a lot is in detective or sleuth stories, mysteries, where there's the "she just knew that he was the one."

[00:02:30] Tiffany: Yeah, you see it a lot in romances. I see it in every genre, honestly, and it's twofold. I think it comes from not wanting to spoon-feed readers, which is a great instinct, and we can talk a little bit more about how to balance that. It also comes from the author knowing so much about their own story that they're filling a lot of it in their head.

[00:02:51] Tiffany: It's hard to know what's coming across on the page to readers and what you think is coming across because you know it. We often assume an objective value to something, like, "oh, she was so afraid of losing her job," or "if she didn't address this issue, she was worried they were facing divorce." That, by itself, doesn't impact us unless you lay the groundwork and dig a little deeper so that we understand why this job is important and why it would be bad to lose it, beyond the general dislike of job loss. There's got to be something deeper and more specific. And that's actually the key to addressing magical knowing in general: remove the leaps and generalizations and get really specific and granular.

Tiffany: It's like when you take a math test in school and they tell you, "Yes, you got the right answer, but you didn't show your work." You have to show your work. We need to understand how the character gets to where you're telling us they've gotten, or it feels like an authorial device.

[00:04:04] Matty: It's probably very obvious if someone looks in their manuscript and sees phrases like "she just had a feeling" or "I just knew he was the one." That's pretty obvious. But in the spirit of identifying if this is going on, are there any subtle clues that a writer can look for in their own work that indicate they're falling back on magical knowing?

[00:04:28] Tiffany: It's hard to see it in your own work, as it's difficult to see many things in our work, because we're filling in the blanks since we know the story so well. You need to be a bit forensic and deliberate about it. Having outside eyes, whether it's a beta reader, critique partners, an editor, or a book coach, can provide objective feedback. But you can also dissect the story yourself, which is something I advise in my editing work with authors. Ask yourself questions and dig deeper to see if you can identify not just overarching instances of magical knowing but also individual ones.

For example, do we understand what drives your character? Why does losing a job or a marriage matter to them? Have you conveyed that on the page? Write down what your character wants and what drives them. Then ask yourself, how would a reader know this? Pinpoint where you've shown this on the page. Another piece of advice is to dig deeper than you might initially. For instance, if your character is an architect who dreams of building eco-conscious buildings to make a name for herself, explore what makes this dream unique and important to her.

Tiffany: We often assume we understand the goals and motivations of our characters, but there's a deeper level, which I refer to as what's driving them, underpinning their motivations. We need to understand both their external and internal goals. It's essential to explore why specific outcomes matter to them personally. It's not enough to state that a character in a given field wants to achieve greatness or become a trailblazer. We must delve into the personal reasons driving these aspirations.

What personal experiences or insecurities are influencing their ambitions? For instance, does a female character feel the need to prove herself due to societal pressures or past discouragement? Identifying the character's deep-seated longing or lack is crucial in understanding what they desperately seek and why. This longing or lack is the void they are trying to fill.

When reviewing your story, it's beneficial to conduct a separate editing pass focusing solely on these aspects. This involves a granular and forensic analysis of each line and scene, assessing how well it conveys the character's desires, motivations, and the logical progression of their realizations.

Characters, like people, are shaped by their experiences and relationships. These factors subtly guide their actions, even if they're not consciously aware of them. By laying the groundwork and hinting at these underlying influences, you allow readers to infer the reasons behind the characters' actions, thus avoiding the pitfall of having them act in seemingly unmotivated or undeveloped ways.

[00:09:27] Matty: Many things you mentioned made me realize that I had been considering magical knowing more in the context of external knowledge, such as in mysteries and thrillers, where the character just knows who the culprit is. However, there's also an internal aspect, more prevalent in genres like romance, where the knowing pertains to self-awareness. To counteract this, I annotate my manuscript with notes on what the characters know, think, and feel at various points, helping to justify their actions, such as why someone would risk entering a dangerous situation.

I may not put it explicitly on the page. I may, but I might not. At least I know that, and I'm checking myself against it. The same could be true of these inwardly directed motivations, like her reacting more extremely to this person in this situation because it reminds her of a previous relationship. Maybe that doesn’t come out until later, but are there differences in how a writer should approach the management of magical knowing if it's more internally versus externally focused?

[00:10:53] Tiffany: Maybe you point your attentions in different places. I said there was the blanket element of it, which is more what I was just describing, which you're calling internal. That's motivating the entire character arc. Then there are those specific moments. What you were talking about with analyzing every scene and articulating those things, that sort of hits on something I call the want, the action, and the shift for every scene.

What is the character's overarching goal?

[00:11:22] Tiffany: This is laying the groundwork. I want to talk about the more granular ones that you're calling external. But in every single scene, your character has what I call an uber goal, their overarching goal, the main thing they're trying to achieve in the story, whatever you've decided that is, and their main motivation for that.

But in every scene, there's also a more immediate goal, related to that ultimate goal, something they're trying to achieve in order to ultimately attain that distant goal, the overarching one. So in every scene, can you identify what that is? What is the thing in this scene that they need to do, get, accomplish, find out?

In order to get one step closer to that final destination, what action in the scene do they take to do that, and how does the success or failure of that action affect them and cause a shift in them that either pushes them farther along the path toward that goal or derails them from it and forces them to renegotiate their strategy, find their motivation to go after it again, or send them into a tailspin from which they have to recover?

And if you can do that for every scene, you are paving bigger picture stepping stones, but also at the scene level. You and I talked earlier about what I call the "but therefore" that I stole from the "South Park" creators, and you called it, I think, the "because because" or "because and then."

[00:12:55] Matty: Yeah, you have to be able to say the character does this because of something, not despite something.

[00:13:02] Tiffany: It could be "despite," actually, but the way the "South Park" guys talk about it, they say every single scene should be connected with the words "but" or "therefore," meaning every scene is an obstacle to what came before. "She was going down the road to get to the market but a bus ran her over." Or, "therefore."

It's causal. "She was going down the street to get to the market and therefore she was standing there when the killer drove by, and she was able to identify the license plate." These are terrible examples, but if you can do that, your scene has the logic, causality, momentum, and forward push that we're looking for.

We see the groundwork laid for why things are happening, how they're happening, and what's making the character see it. But the more granular moments you're talking about have a lot to do with character in our life, I think, and showing, letting readers be privy to what's going on inside them. So when I say inner life, I don’t mean large swaths of internal monologue, which can bog your story down and get very navel-gazing.

I mean letting readers understand, in whatever way works for your style and your story, what's going on inside the character. Because without that, we are always kept at a distance from the story, and that’s one of the main causes of magical knowing. In the interest of not spoon-feeding all of that to the reader, authors just tend to skip over it.

And then you get the "he just knew," or we just see them acting as if they have come to some realization or shift, but we were not made privy to it.

The pitfalls of "magical ignorance"

[00:14:50] Matty: In terms of the internal things, there's almost another flavor of magical knowing, which is "magical ignorance," where the character should know something, like internally, fact-based things, but they don’t recognize something about themselves that’s apparent to the reader. Sometimes I read those and think there must be something else going on here that the character doesn’t recognize. They're having this magical ignorance that they’re not recognizing something that’s apparent to everybody else. Sometimes it plays out in a very satisfying way, where it becomes clear that what you thought was the obvious thing is not the obvious thing, or the reason the person isn't recognizing it is explained later on. But then sometimes you just get to the end and think, no, that person should have known that all along.

[00:15:36] Tiffany: It feels device-y and like incomplete character development, and we sort of see the author's hand, because you're forcing your character not to see something that the reader is questioning why they wouldn’t see. But the solution is the same. You have to lay the groundwork, so if your character is not seeing something obvious, if they have a blind spot, you just have to pave in why.

Maybe they always see the best in everyone, and so they can't see the bad intentions in their best friend that we are clearly seeing through their actions. Maybe they are socially naive because they were raised in a commune without any social engagement. I’m coming up with very strange examples today.

But if you establish it as the reality of the story, the reality of the characters, and develop both deeply and specifically enough, you don’t have to spoon-feed us. We are putting these puzzle pieces together as readers, ourselves, and you’re engaging us directly in the story that way, by giving us the puzzle pieces. We're here fitting them together, so your character doesn’t have to see it, and you don’t have to spell it out, but you have dropped those breadcrumbs that we have been faithfully gathering.

[00:16:51] Tiffany: So now we're starting, and I'm mixing metaphors here horribly, but now we're starting to see the full picture. I often refer to this as laying in brush strokes of context. It doesn't have to be big swaths of info dump. If you just, little by little, stroke in shading here and there throughout the story as you develop the character and move the story forward, we will infer these things for ourselves. That's what draws us so deeply into a story and makes readers feel hooked. We're not just passive recipients of the story; we're not just watching these characters on a screen in front of us. That's what makes us start to feel as if we are them. We're in it.

[00:17:35] Matty: And when you're judging whether you're spoon-feeding too much or you need more of that, like, I know my pitfall, according to my editor, is that I assume the reader is more in sync with my understanding of what the character is doing than I should. So after his pass, I normally have to go in and be more explicit about things that I erroneously thought were sufficiently clear, but do you have guidance about that? What is too much and what is not enough?

[00:18:03] Tiffany: Oh, that's a really good question.

[00:18:05] Matty: I know that's a really long question. We could do a whole other podcast episode on that.

The challenge of finding balance

[00:18:09] Tiffany: Yeah, and it's funny, I always joke that the answer I give most frequently to questions about craft is also the world's most frustrating answer, which is, it just depends. Finding the balance in story, in general, between too much and not enough in almost every story element is one of the biggest challenges of storytelling and mastering craft. It can vary depending on your genre, your reader, the story, the author. In that regard, sometimes the only real way to find it is through outside eyes, because you're not necessarily the best judge of that. Like you said with your editor, you are doing what you think is the best, most effective way to lay the groundwork we're talking about, to brushstroke in the context.

But whether or not it comes across that way to the reader is not always something you can see until you get editorial objectivity on your own work. You can do that to a degree, but it's almost impossible to have it 100 percent on your own work unless you literally step away from it for like six months and then go back to it with really fresh eyes. A lot will become apparent to you. One of the main jobs, I say this all the time, of an editor, or anyone who's giving you feedback, is to hold up the mirror and to let you see more clearly what you have on the page because it's so hard to assess it yourself when you're in the middle of it.

[00:19:37] Matty: So, I always suggest that authors go about doing their own editing and revising that way too. Go through and just ask yourself: Why? Why does your character want what they want? First of all, can you articulate that? Why do they want that or think they want that thing?

[00:19:55] Tiffany: Where does that come from? What deeper desire or drive lies beneath that vague or glib answer you might initially give or generalized answer? What are the specifics behind it? What is this situation hitting on deep in your character that they may not even be consciously aware of? That they may be picking up in other characters and drawing conclusions from.

Just go through and, I mean, I literally do that line by line when I'm editing. Do I see that? Do I have questions in my mind as a reader? Like I said, it can be a bit harder to do, but if you know your intention in a scene, you can address these concerns. Often authors will tell me, after I ask those questions, "Well, I explain her motivation four lines down." I'll go four lines down and see why that feels sufficient to them because they know her full story. But for readers, you're still just vaguely hinting at something that we don't have enough context on yet to fully understand.

The importance of specifics

[00:20:58] Matty: I found that when I've gone back to my manuscripts to address the critique from the editor about it not being clear why the characters are doing this, it's less about stating "he did this because he was very angry with his roommate," and more about adding actions, like in long passages of dialogue, and going back to add some physicality to it. This sheds more light beyond just the words onto maybe what he's thinking or how he's feeling.

[00:21:20] Tiffany: Exactly, adding physicality that reveals more than just the words is helpful.

[00:21:28] Matty: Sometimes adding adverbs, as appropriate, helps too. I'm proof-listening to the audiobook of my fifth Lizzy Ballard novel, and every once in a while, the narrator interprets it in a way I didn't anticipate. Looking at the words on the page, I can see why she thought that, but if I had included something like "he closed his fist over the lapel of his jacket before he spoke," it would seed a little more hint that this person is really supposed to be more angry than irritated in this scene, or more contemplative than passive for whatever it might be.

[00:22:13] Tiffany: What you're describing is using show to indicate, giving clues that let us draw the conclusion. So, one way to avoid spoon-feeding is to show rather than spell it out. If we're seeing the behavior, we start to put the pieces together, like "Oh, they're uncomfortable. That must hit on what we found out three chapters ago about how their father used to belittle them as a child every time they tried to reach for something outside of their comfort zone," or whatever it is. We make those connections based on what you are showing us.

But sometimes it can also be tell, just not in the spoon-feeding way like "she was angry because." If you tell us a little bit, it’s like glancing off the thing instead of putting your finger right on it. Think about times when you, okay, let's use a specific example from the blog post you wanted to talk about. When people ask me why I moved to Austin 17 years ago from Florida, they often ask why. I give them my standard anecdotal answer, which is I visited Austin and just had a vibe about it.

I felt like it was a great place to be. And that is true to a point, but it's the magical knowing. In the blog post, I talk about several things. First of all, what led me to even start looking for someplace else. Many people get a bit carried away. I don't know why. But I really think that if you are going to be a parent, you should consider all aspects. I became interested in the foster to adopt program and started thinking about Austin.

Why though? Because what I really was looking for in the foster to adopt program was having a family. I was single. I wanted to have a sense of love, belonging, and security and not be on my own anymore. So that was the way I thought I had to do it because I was living in this retirement town where dating was practically a dead zone.

[00:24:41] Tiffany: But again, so now we have a little more clarity of motivation. I didn't just go, "Oh, that looks like a great place. I just know it. I feel it." I did a lot of research. I came to the town and spent some time, like a week and a half, maybe total in two different visits. I researched the demographics, the educational level, the political slant, the population, the cost of living, and what parts of town I would like. I got really granular with it. I looked at census data, the ratio of men to women, and the age distribution. This was the farthest thing from just knowing, but just knowing makes a fun anecdote.

To a degree, it did feel like that. Like, I got here and there was a day where I just thought, "This feels right." But it felt right for all those reasons that I may not have been articulating at the time to myself or anyone else, but that was what was going into that magical moment of just knowing. If I were a character, you would lay that groundwork so that even if the character isn't putting those pieces together, the reader can.

I can imagine a story where a character decides to move from Florida to Austin just because they have a vibe. They're looking for something and they don't know what. We need more than that.

[00:26:06] Matty: Yeah, and they may subconsciously have all that going on, but they themselves are magically ignorant of what's driving them. It could be the focus of the story to delve into why they made this decision and what it is about their past that affects it. That could be very entertainingly and gradually revealed to the reader, where the author understands more about what their character is doing than the character does.

[00:26:31] Tiffany: That is the basis of a lot of stories, especially in genres like women's fiction. A common trope is a character leaving home, forging ahead on the hero's journey, or coming back to wherever. "Back" may mean actually returning home or going somewhere new. They're fleeing something they're trying to get away from, or they're going towards something they want, or both. And again, they may not fully know what that is. As you said, the story may be about uncovering that, but the reader needs to see some clues. You can't ask us to take on faith that they just want to start over and this is a place where they think they'll find a better life because those are vague terms. We don't know what they mean, so we have nothing to hook into, nothing to root for them to achieve. We need the specifics.

[00:27:31] Matty: Yeah, I realized that, shifting gears a bit toward more of the external, the externally focused magical knowing is, I think, more driven by plot issues than character motivation issues. Because what I imagine is, falling back on the mystery novel or the police procedural, for example, "he just knew that this person was the bad guy." I've got to believe it's in part because you need to get the sleuth to pursue a person and you don't know how. It's going to be just as frustrating to a mystery or police procedural reader to read that and not know why; it was because he secretly knew about his gambling problem or he noticed, in a Sherlock Holmes way, that his boots were dirtier than they should be if he was really an accountant.

We do get vibes from people, right? That's real, but it's not just like, "Ooh, I'm getting a vibe." The animalistic part of us is picking up on cues, and that's what you have to show on the page. What are they seeing from that character? Where's that vibe coming from? Is it shifty eyes?

[00:28:45] Tiffany: Or, like you said, the clue on the boot? Is it drumming their fingers on the table? I'm using a bunch of cliches here, but you see where I'm going with this: give readers the clues, show us what the character is seeing through their eyes, and we will understand where that magical vibe, in air quotes, is coming from, because you've shown it to us.

What you're describing is lazy writing, right? It's lazy, frustrated writing. Nothing against any author who does that; we've all done it. It's like, "Just trust me, she knows." Because we get to a point where we've backed ourselves into a corner and we need to push the story forward.

And we don't always know how that happens. It’s great that you brought that up because those are great clues to look at where you have either shortcutted to something like that or felt that frustration and go, "Okay, let's dig a little deeper. Let's do the hard work where it feels like I'm at a dead end, I can't get through, and just keep at it until I break through." Because somewhere in there, if you dig deep enough in the character, in the plot, in the physical clues, whatever it is you've left out, it’s there if you just mine down to it.

[00:30:05] Matty: Well, I mentioned earlier about a conversation I had with Mary Carroll Moore about using "because." We had been talking about "the character does this because," and I applied that to the book I'm working on. I found myself in a situation where I needed to get a character from where they were to Baltimore for later plot purposes, and I didn't really have a good "because" yet. I started running through, just as the character would, what are all their options at this point?

They could go to Baltimore, or they could hunker down where they are, or they could hit the road without any particular destination in mind. And I realized there was a perfectly legitimate reason for them to pick the Baltimore option among all the others. Once I reassured myself of that, then I could go ahead with them going to Baltimore and seed in the appropriate things that make that, among all the list of things they could do, the one they pick.

But I think that moment where you say, "Wait, why are they doing that?" doesn't necessarily mean you're at the end of the road. It just means you need to understand better yourself so that you can set it up appropriately for the reader.

[00:31:14] Tiffany: One way to make this less daunting is to remember, as you just said, this is often something you see in editing and revision. It's not necessarily while you're writing. If you just need to get the draft done and you need her in Baltimore, just say he goes on vacation in Baltimore. That's fine. Put it in there for now. Then later, you can go back and do the digging. But if you stop while you're drafting, you might lose your momentum. So don't worry about it at that stage. Leave the magical knowing in. But then, as I do in my job as an editor, go in and start poking your own holes.

When you find one, that's when you hunker down and dig a bit deeper and try to avoid those coincidences, which is another manifestation of magical knowing. For example, the very person she's been trying to avoid walks into the coffee shop where she is, and 20 pages later, the exact clue she's looking for is found in a coin she found in her pocket with the right date on it, given by the barista at the coffee shop. If you string enough of those together, it starts to feel contrived and we see the author's hand. Just dig deeper and find more plausible ways of laying that groundwork. Put the brush strokes in and don't worry so much during the drafting period.

If you need to shortcut during the drafting period to reach the end, do it. Then you've got something to work with. The fun part for me is the excavation of editing, revising, and deepening, making the story exactly what you wanted it to be in the first place.

[00:32:54] Matty: I've found that framing out the story works well because I had a great scene in mind where one of the protagonist's allies goes into the home of the bad guy to get a piece of evidence to send to the police. I worked hard to make that make sense, but I finally had to admit there was no reason it would work. He would have to go into the bad guy's house. That was a cute idea, but I just had to let it go.

[00:33:24] Tiffany: I love that you did that because it's really hard to let go of something, especially when you're trying to push the story in a certain direction and it's just not going to go there unless you force it. That's a tough thing to let go of, especially for plotters. You've got your outline, which makes sense and works, but sometimes the story develops differently. It doesn’t come out on the page the way you thought it would in the outline stage, and you have to be willing to redirect if necessary.

[00:33:57] Matty: Yeah, or in this case, I could have completely overhauled the story to make it make sense for him to go into the house, but that's like 80 percent of the work for 20 percent of the payoff, just to have this one scene that I thought would be kind of fun.

Plus, I'll just use it as a giveaway for my email newsletter subscribers.

[00:34:16] Tiffany: I love that you said that too. It's really hard to let go of a darling, and I always advise having a discard file where you keep all that stuff because it can be many things. It can be harvest material for something in the future or a book in the series, but it can also be bonus material for your fans, a magnet for new newsletter subscribers, or a fun thing to talk about in an interview, like the deleted scene in movies.

[00:34:46] Matty: There was a story, which would be way better if I could remember the details, but I was at a Thriller Writers Conference some years ago. One of the speakers, who had written a World War II historical espionage novel, told a fascinating story about some research he had done. He discovered a fascinating fact, and although his publisher pushed back, he felt strongly about it. Eventually, he realized the publisher was right and now uses it in speeches like this, which I thought was very cute.

[00:35:23] Tiffany: It's hard because there is, especially with darlings, a knee-jerk desire to defend them and explain why they're necessary. I often work with publishers doing three passes for every manuscript. My rule is we'll push about something we feel strongly about, me and the in-house editors, a couple of times, and then on the third time, if the author really insists, we go hands off. But we push hard before we get to that point because there's a lot of resistance to letting go. As a writer myself, my first reaction to feedback is to explain why it's wrong.

[00:36:08] Tiffany: If you let it sit and percolate, think about it, and try to mess with it and fix it, eventually, I think we learn to trust those objective outside eyes giving us feedback. The stronger you react to something, the more likely it's hitting on a darling. Feedback that doesn’t hit something personal doesn’t elicit such a strong response in an author, so that’s actually a good way to pinpoint something that maybe needs a second look, even though you love it.

[00:36:48] Matty: A good example of that is in one of the Ann Kinnear books set on Mount Desert Island. It seemed really coincidental that these two people, otherwise with no apparent connections, knew each other through more casual interactions. I thought, "It’s not that big an island, and the community is small," so it made sense to me that these people would have met. I didn't change the fact that they already knew each other when they encountered each other, but I seeded it with more examples of setting up why it actually makes total sense that these two people are aware of each other and have interacted in some way.

[00:37:34] Tiffany: Exactly what you said is how you fix it. You don’t ignore coincidences because they happen in life. It would be ridiculous to pretend they don’t in a story, but it helps if you give us a reason to believe it's plausible. Seeding it in, like a line here and there, makes it believable.

[00:37:56] Matty: Yeah, exactly.

[00:37:57] Tiffany: It’s not major surgery most of the time; just go in and drop the breadcrumbs where you need them.

[00:38:02] Matty: Yeah, I didn’t do it overtly, but I seeded in that one character was a consultant and he charged a lot for his consultations, so he was known to the upper crust of the community because they were the ones hiring him for his services. They would have mentioned him to their friends and so on.

[00:38:23] Tiffany: And your readers remember that. We are constantly gathering the threads of the world, the story, and the characters, weaving and braiding them together to make sense of it. That's the beauty of written stories as opposed to other mediums, which I also love. But in reading, you are not just a passive observer as often is the case with movies and television. The reader is doing a lot of the connection work.

We're constantly trying to put the puzzle together. Research shows that the same areas of your brain that light up when you are actively doing these things also light up when you are reading about these things. This draws you in more deeply than more visual media. That's the power an author has. Give us a reason to make those connections, provide most of the puzzle pieces, and withhold a few if you want to create a reveal. We still need enough to orient us, ground us, and make us care.

[00:39:49] Matty: Well, Tiffany, I think you've just identified the next topic for our podcast conversations, if I can lure you back. I just had "REVEAL" written in big letters on my notes.

[00:39:57] Tiffany: Always.

[00:40:05] Matty: Thank you for coming back, and please let everyone know where they can find out more about you and everything you do online.

[00:40:10] Tiffany: You can find me at foxprinteditorial.com, which is probably the best clearinghouse for everything. I am on Instagram and Facebook under Tiffany Yates Martin. I also have a weekly blog with craft tips, business tips for making a career as a writer, and a ton of resources for authors, many of them free. One thing that might be relevant to this conversation is a beta reader questionnaire that can help get actionable feedback.

Thank you, too. I always have the best time talking to you. I lose track of time and feel like we could do this all day long. Thanks for having me on. It’s always a pleasure, and I love the service you're doing for authors.

Matty Dalrymple 4/23/24 Matty Dalrymple 4/23/24

Episode 235 - The Source Code of Storytelling with Rob Hart

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Rob Hart discusses THE SOURCE CODE OF STORYTELLING, including the importance of making your readers laugh; getting rid of the rituals; doing a backwards editing pass; posing the villain as the hero of their own story; not counting out the Riders of Rohan; and writing an outline and throwing it out.

Rob Hart is the author of THE PARADOX HOTEL and THE WAREHOUSE. He also wrote the Ash McKenna crime series, the short story collection TAKE-OUT, the novella SCOTT FREE with James Patterson, and the comic book BLOOD OATH with Alex Segura. His next books, coming in 2024, are ASSASSINS ANONYMOUS, and DARK SPACE, the latter of which is co-written with Alex Segura.

Episode Links

www.robwhart.com
https://www.instagram.com/robwhart1/
https://www.facebook.com/robwhart1

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Rob Hart covers various aspects of storytelling and writing techniques. Rob emphasizes the importance of humor in writing, even in serious stories, to create intimacy with characters and make dramatic moments land more impactfully. He discusses the utility of humor as a tool for building trust with the reader and making characters more relatable. Rob also touches on the need to avoid strict writing rituals to adapt to life's unpredictability, suggesting that flexibility in the writing process is crucial.

Rob advocates for editing novels backward to infuse fresh energy into endings and ensure they are as polished as the beginnings. He highlights the significance of villains being the protagonists of their own stories, arguing that depth, drive, and ambition make for compelling antagonists. Rob also mentions the power of the "come-from-behind save" in storytelling, which emphasizes community and support among characters.

Furthermore, Rob suggests writing outlines then discarding them to ensure only the most impactful elements remain in the narrative. This process helps in streamlining the story and avoiding unnecessary details. Lastly, Rob shares personal anecdotes and examples from popular culture to illustrate his points, providing a comprehensive overview of his approach to storytelling and writing.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indie Author Podcast. Today my guest is Rob Hart. Hey Rob, how are you doing?

[00:00:05] Rob: Hey, thanks so much for having me.

[00:00:07] Matty: I am happy to have you here.

Meet Rob Hart

[00:00:09] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Rob Hart is the author of "The Paradox Hotel" and "The Warehouse." He also wrote the Ash McKenna Crime Series, the short story collection "Take Out," the novella "Scott Free" with James Patterson, and the comic book "Blood Oath" with Alex Segura.

His next books, which are coming out in 2024, are "Assassin's Anonymous" and "Dark Space," the latter of which is also co-written with Alex Segura.

The source code of storytelling

[00:00:33] Matty: And the topic of our conversation today is going to be the source code of storytelling. And this came from a wonderful presentation that Rob gave at the 2023 Writer's Digest conference that I attended. And I wrote down lots and lots of points he had made. And then when I got in touch with Rob, I said, "Rob, can you pick six of these points that you would like to talk about with my podcast listeners?" And he graciously did that. And so I'm just going to throw them out for the conversation and see where the conversation takes us.

Make your reader laugh

[00:00:59] Matty: So the first topic that I wanted to hit was "Make your reader laugh." Why should we make our reader laugh?

[00:01:07] Rob: I think that's so important to be able to inject humor into your work, even if you're writing something really serious. You don't have to take what you're writing and make it into a comedy, but the thing is when we can laugh with characters, we like them more.

This is something that I did with "Assassins Anonymous," which is coming out in June, and it's about the world's best hitman, who's like a John Wick-type character who gets into a support program for killers because he doesn't want to kill anyone anymore. And one of the earliest decisions I made with him was that I had to make him funny.

I had to make him really funny and really charming because he's going to do things later in the book that, if you don't love him, I'm going to lose you as a reader. So there needs to be that sort of intimacy and closeness to the character. And I think in a general sense, when an author or director can make us laugh along with the characters, it opens us up a little bit more and once we're a little bit more open and a little bit more vulnerable, that's when the really dramatic moments can hit, and they land like body blows.

And I think the master of this is James Gunn, the director who did the "Guardians of the Galaxy" movies, which are really goofy, silly, ridiculous, over-the-top movies, until you get to the end, until you get to those really resonant, emotional moments, and they just land so, so hard. Because we've spent all this time just falling in love with these characters because of how goofy and ridiculous they are.

[00:02:37] Matty: The example that often strikes me when I think about making people laugh where you wouldn't expect it is in "Pulp Fiction," when they shoot the guy in the back seat. It's been a long time since I've watched "Pulp Fiction," but "Pulp Fiction" is not the normal kind of movie I watch, and I had put it off for a long time because I figured it was probably not for me, but I got really engrossed in the movie and that moment came just like when I needed a break.

[00:03:15] Rob: Yeah, and that's the thing—it also works as a pressure release valve. Sometimes you need that. When things are really dark for a long time, you have to give your audience a break. You have to let them laugh and decompress a little. Because if you're hitting them with the same tone over and over again, it becomes too much.

[00:03:33] Matty: Yeah, I like the idea of making the reader laugh because it helps them trust you. That's a different perspective than I'm used to hearing. Can you talk a bit about how humor can build trust with your reader?

[00:03:45] Rob: Yeah, so this is something I go back to a lot. Chuck Palahniuk, the author of "Fight Club," talks about establishing authority. There are two ways to establish authority: the head method and the heart method. The head method is demonstrating knowledge and technical proficiency. For example, when writing an assassin character, showing him being good at his job or how brilliant he can be in a stressful situation—that's the head method. The heart method is about being vulnerable and honest with your reader. I think a lot of humor comes from honesty and vulnerability. When we lean into that heart method, it's another access point to remind us that our characters are just like us—they are regular people. That's what we aim to write. And once we establish that trust, you can really take the reader anywhere.

[00:04:39] Matty: I find it interesting, I'm trying to decide if this is the same example or the opposite, that when you have a cast of characters, and one is kind of goofy and explicitly there to make the reader laugh, and then you show something different than the humorous side, like a deeper or seemingly contradictory side, it builds trust because the reader sees that you're not using stereotypes or caricatures and are willing to explore the depths of your characters beyond their ostensible function.

[00:05:22] Rob: That's 100 percent true. That's authority from an unexpected source, which I really love, and I think it can be used incredibly well. One of my favorite jokes of all time on "The Simpsons" is when the family is going to Japan and Homer is upset. Marge says, "You should be happy about going to Japan; you liked 'Rashomon,'" and Homer responds, "That's not how I remember it."

If you've seen "Rashomon," it's about perspective and memory, so it's a very clever joke. But it's also Homer Simpson, the world's most famous idiot, making a fairly clever reference to a Kurosawa movie, which is unexpected from his character. And that's why that joke lands so hard for me—because it's a dumb character referring to one of the greatest movies ever made in a way you wouldn't expect him to understand.

[00:06:48] Matty: Yeah, those are my favorite characters—when they're going along and you have expectations of them, then they do something unexpected. It's the kind of surprising yet inevitable twist. You can't just drop them into suddenly becoming a movie critic, but I like your example as well.

Get rid of the rituals

[00:07:07] Matty: Moving on to the second of the great points you made in your presentation, another point is to get rid of the rituals. This is kind of surprising because I think a lot of people talk about how they always have to have their cup of coffee and always have to be sitting at this desk. Why do you recommend against rituals?

[00:07:23] Rob: I think rituals can be really self-limiting in the sense that life doesn't always allow for ritual. I had this idea in my head, you know, back when I was a little baby writer, that I needed to only write at night, and only if I had a glass of wine, and only if there was a certain type of music playing. Sometimes it was like getting all those things to line up was really difficult.

And the thing that I learned from being a parent was that you write when you can. Because your schedule is not your own anymore, your time is not your own anymore. There was a period when my daughter was in her first year. I would know that when she went down for her afternoon nap, I had an hour and a half.

And I've got it now, and I've got to use it. Or even now, on days when she's with me and I don't want to write, I just want to hang out with her and do dumb stuff. And then on the days that she's not with me, I need to really knuckle down and focus on what I'm doing.

So, you know, rules and rituals scare me because if you're not adhering to those rules and rituals, it's easy to feel like, "Oh, this isn't going to work." I've always thought it's better to just say the work gets done or it doesn't, and that's really the only thing you need to focus on.

[00:08:35] Matty: Of all the authors I've spoken with, I think having a child is the best example of the benefit of not being tied to rituals, and their duration of allocated writing time suspiciously matches up with their child's nap duration at that moment.

Nothing has to be done a certain way

[00:08:51] Rob: Yeah, and I think it's important to just get this idea out of your head that everything has to be done a certain way. Everyone's process is going to be uniquely their own. And that's really what you spend a lot of time on, even like the first couple of years of me trying to learn how to do this was me trying to figure out the way that I need to do this, you know, and it's going to look different for everyone else.

[00:09:04] Matty: And I think we all, you know, start off from a place of copying. We want to know what everyone's rituals are because we're looking for what works. The thing that worries me is when people take everything as a rule. It's like, "Oh, you write like this, so I have to write like this."

And it's not like that. You have to write the way you write. You don't have to write like I write because the way I write might be weird. You know, I have a buddy, Jordan, who pound for pound is, I think, one of the best novelists working today. Jordan Harper, his last book was called "Everybody Knows." His book "She Rides Shotgun" is going to be a movie soon.

He's unbelievable. He writes his book, writes all his favorite scenes out of order, and then stitches them together. That's insane to me. It's like, I, how? That is not something that I could ever understand or recommend to anyone, and yet he's amazing, you know?

But that's his process, and that's okay. It looks different for him, and I'm happy for him, but if someone told me the only way I could write is if I wrote like that, I don't know if I can write.

[00:10:12] Matty: I think that's an extension of exactly what you're saying. If you decide you can only write between 8 and 10 in a dark room with a glass of wine, then it's not only a problem when you run out of wine or your daughter wants to play with you at 8, but being that reliant on ritual probably makes people overreliant on whatever approach they're using at the moment.

So, let's say outlining everything in a Five act structure is what's working for you, and if you allow yourself to get into a rut in your writing schedule, you might also get into a rut, maybe the five-act structure stops serving you, but you don't notice because it's just what you do, and that getting into a rut can link into a lot of other areas of your writer life.

[00:10:56] Rob: Exactly. And that's the thing, it's such a hard thing to do. It's hard to say, "I'm gonna sit down for several hours today and look at a word document and make up funny little people and then make them get into trouble." Because not only is the act itself really difficult, but then the fact that you're gonna do it for months, and then edit it for months, and it may turn out to be all for nothing.

There's no guarantee that it's even going to work. It is this incredible leap of faith. That somehow, someway, the whole thing is going to work out, and I still start off novels like, "I don't know how to write a novel, I don't know how to do this, I can't finish this, what am I doing?"

I've written eight, and I still don't always believe that I have the ability to write a novel. But that's the thing; I'm always trying to remove impediments, not add them. And I think as you add impediments, it just makes it that much harder.

[00:11:51] Matty: Yeah, I never know whether it's heartening or disheartening for baby authors to hear that even very experienced authors like yourself still face that. I guess it's good to know you have company.

[00:12:03] Rob: I mean, I would hope that it's encouraging, just to luxuriate in this feeling, because it's never going to get better. In fact, it's probably going to...

[00:12:11] Matty: Because god forbid you do a good job, then someone's going to expect you to do it again.

Yes. These things unto themselves could be whole podcast episode discussions, plumbing the depths of these kinds of questions.

Edit Backwards

[00:12:24] Matty: The third point you talked about in your source code of storytelling was doing a backwards editorial pass. So talk a little bit about that.

[00:12:33] Rob: Yeah, that's one of my favorite things to do, and that's one of those things where, like I always say, I keep on saying it, nothing I say is a rule, but this is one of those things that I say to people, and I think it's resonated with a lot of people that I've shared it with, is that I always edit my books backwards at least once.

Usually, as I'm nearing the end, when I know that I'm almost done, I will go in and start with the last chapter and then just start working my way forward to the beginning, and it does a couple of things. It helps to see the book out of order, because sometimes you might clock things about the flow or the narrative structure that weren't really working, but more importantly what I think it does is it infuses a lot of fresh energy into the ending.

Because my experience as a freelance editor has been that I've seen people have given me books that I see, so much time and so much effort has gone into the beginning of the story, and then you can tell by the end, they were just like, "I just want to be done. I am finished." You know, and things kind of peter out, and you lose some of that energy.

You get that "I want to be done" energy. And I think taking that sort of like beginning energy and really letting it sit in the ending is something that could be really useful. And it's always useful for me because whenever I do it, I sit there with my last chapter and I'm like, "Man, looking at it just out of sequence with a fresh set of eyes."

I'm like, "Yeah, I get it. I get it. This is not working. And this is why—it's because I want it to be done."

[00:13:54] Matty: Have you ever written the last chapter first?

[00:13:58] Rob: Oh God, no. I very much write in linear sequence and that's the best way for me. I always know, mostly what my ending is going to be, if not in specifics, then at least in spirit. You know, I don't know that I could ever write a story without understanding where I was going because if I was just sort of like writing, then I would write forever and would never stop.

But yeah, it's usually my endings, I feel like, are pretty close to where they always.

[00:14:28] Matty: You had talked about the, sometimes the energy has become, "I just want to get this done" energy. Are there red flags you look out for when you're reading that ending, or tips you have for people if they try this out and they experience that but they don't know how to fix it?

[00:14:46] Rob: That's a good question. I always try to take each section that I'm working on, whether it be a chapter or a larger section of the book, and try to view it completely in isolation, almost like it's its own little island, you know? I'm still considering the rest of the story and how it plays out, but I'm most focused on what this one particular scene means, what needs to happen here, am I accomplishing that, am I getting across the point that I want to make, are the characters doing what they need to do. It's isolation, it's trying to view these things in isolation, almost like you would consider an episodic season of television.

Thank you. Where, you know, you've got an episode that keys into a broader story, but it's still telling a very specific narrative that's confined to 30 to 45 minutes or whatever. And when I think of it in terms like that, it's easier to kind of look at that and say, "Okay, the only thing that matters right now is this scene. These two characters in this cafe having this conversation. Am I accomplishing what I set out to accomplish when I put it here in the first place?"

[00:15:51] Matty: Yeah, I really like that. I really like the analogy of having it be like assessing a TV series. That's very cool.

The villain as the protagonist

[00:15:57] Matty: So I'm going to move on to the fourth point you made that I called out, which is, pose the villain as the protagonist. And I don't know if this is what you intended there, but the way I saw this play out, and if listeners are bored with hearing this story, just fast forward like one minute.

So I had to write a novella between my third and fourth Lizzie Ballard thriller, because the chronology was such that whatever happened to Lizzie Ballard, the protagonist, could happen days, weeks, even months after the end of book three. But the thing that was going to happen to the antagonist next was going to happen literally seconds after the end of book three, and I kind of left it hanging there because it's a cliffhanger, it's a series I wanted people to read on, and then when I started working on book four I realized that accommodating this disconnect in the chronologies meant that like the first five chapters of the fourth book were about the antagonist, which isn't really what I wanted so I ended up writing a novella.

And I'm really kind of perplexed about how to market it because it's definitely for the people who read book three, they're getting on to book four, and they, they need that bridge. And it's for me because I love my antagonist. And certainly, in that book, the antagonist of book three is the protagonist of the novella.

So that's the example I came to this tip with. And can you talk about what you intended for people to take from that tip?

[00:17:17] Rob: Sure, sure. That's a really cool idea that you did that. I really dig that. Yeah, I mean, it's always important to remember that no one wakes up and says, "I'm going to do evil today." You know, even people that we might, as a larger society, perceive as bad, a lot of them wake up and say, "I'm gonna do the thing that is best for me today, or I'm going to do the thing that only I can do because only I am right and everyone else is wrong."

The villain is the hero of their own story

[00:17:41] Rob: This idea of sort of like pure evil that does evil for its own sake is sort of... You know, it's more of, I don't want to say it's kind of childish, but it's you know, this idea of, "Oh, there's a devil and the devil just does evil." That's not what a real villain is.

A real villain is someone who has depth and drive and reason and ambition. They're just like your protagonists. They're just on the other side of the coin. Yeah. You know, I tend to use Marvel movies a lot when I'm using examples, because a lot of people have seen them, so it's really easy to do it.

But I think Thanos, in the Infinity War movies, is the most perfect example. Here's a guy who looks at the universe and says, "We're struggling to feed people, we're running out of resources. So I'm gonna find this magical device that's gonna wipe out half of humanity. I mean, half of life in the entire universe."

And then there's going to be more resources to go around, which, you know, on one hand seems dumb, right? Because why not make more resources if you've got a magic device that will do literally anything? But it actually makes sense for his character, because Thanos is a warrior, that's what he does.

He was literally born in blood and has never known anything but strife and conflict and battle. So of course, a character like that, the first thing he's going to go to is the bloody option. Not the compassionate option. So, it was a decision that was informed by his character, and the thing that Infinity War did so well is you saw that weight that he was carrying.

[00:19:44] Matty: Yeah, one of my favorite scenes to write in that novella was a scene where the antagonist of the first three books, whose name is Louise, she finds one of the other good guy characters tied up, and he's been tied up for a long time, and he's been injured, so she helps dress his wounds, and she unties him so he can use the restroom, and then she ties him back up again, and he asks, "Well, why did you do that?"

And she says, "Well, because it doesn't serve any purpose not to do it," and I thought, I enjoyed that as an encapsulation of her reasoning, because she does the bad things she does because she thinks it's like killing half the people in the galaxy. It's the way she knows, it's the tool in her toolbox that she knows how to deploy to pursue what she sees as unselfish ends.

But then she doesn't do things to be intentionally cruel. You know, she's a good person when it serves her and needs to be a good person. She's a bad person when it serves her and needs to be a bad person. And I do wish I could just sit with readers as they read that novella and have them have a little dial that says, "I like her more, I like her less," and see if it hits where I expect it to.

Have you ever had that experience of trying to understand how a reader is reacting to a character that's in that sort of tricky moral area?

[00:20:59] Rob: You know, I've had people make straight comments to me where they'll say, "Oh, I hate that this character did this," or "Oh, I love that this character did this." One of my favorite insights I ever got was from my agent's assistant when he first read "The Warehouse," because "The Warehouse" is about a company that's basically Amazon that takes over the American economy, and so there are three characters in the book, and two are people who work in one of these warehouse facilities, and one is the CEO. So he's like a trillionaire Jeff Bezos type, super evil, super not cool.

But he starts off, because again, he's the hero of the story, he's the hero of his story. You know, he's the one who came in and like saved the planet by, you know, reducing commute times because he built live-work facilities and because he, you know, took all these sort of outdated models and updated them, but in a way that just happened to make him richer. And I patterned him after Sam Walton, who founded Walmart, because, you know, that guy's autobiography is nefarious. This is a guy who did a lot of bad things, a lot, a lot of bad things that reshaped the economy for the worse, and he has such a kind and warm voice, and he's always talking about family, family, family, and it's like, "Man, your company used to lock workers in the store at night, that's not how you treat your family."

And, you know, anyway, the main character of Cloud, Gibson Wells, who runs this company, you know, he starts off like that as like this sort of like down-home Arkansas guy that you kind of want to love. And my agent's assistant was like, "Oh man, I was hoping he would be good."

[00:23:01] Matty: Yeah, those characters are super fun to write and they're super fun to read. I love reading those characters in other people's books.

The come-from-behind save

[00:23:08] Matty: So the fifth point that we called out here was, don't count out the Riders of Rohan. What's behind that?

[00:23:13] Rob: That's one of my favorite ones. In the "Lord of the Rings" movies, and "The Two Towers", when they're at Helm's Deep, and it's like, oh, they're screwed, and then the Riders of Rohan show up with Gandalf at the top of the hill, and then they ride down, and they kill all the orcs. And that does a couple of things that are really important. First, you do have a real visceral feeling that they're gonna lose at that point.

Because they are completely outnumbered, they're completely screwed, and they basically say to each other "We're dead. We're just gonna go down fighting." So right there you're creating a good amount of drama, and then when you have that come-from-behind save, I think that's really important because it just, it kind of reminds us that we're not alone, and that we can get help if we ask for it, and that people will back us up if we need them to.

It gives us a greater sense of community, which is what I think we read books for. We read them because we don't want to feel so alone, and that's why I think it's always such a powerful moment, and it doesn't need to be this big, sweeping battle scene for it to be a come-from-behind save. Like, I call it the Riders of Rohan moment just because it's funny, but it's really that come-from-behind save that you need.

And I've got in "Paradox Hotel", like I've got this little tiny scene where this one character just, you know, gives this other character a little nudge. And it's like, "I got you." And that's it. That's exactly what that is. It's the same thing, just on a much, much smaller scale. And it's because I think we kind of crave those moments of not feeling alone.

And that's why those moments are so, so powerful. And when they are done well, they are incredibly memorable. And again, that's why I go to "The Two Towers", because that is just, I mean, out of all three movies, that might be my favorite scene.

[00:24:53] Matty: Yeah, the scene that reminds me of, I think it's in "Band of Brothers", but there's a scene where they're in the trenches, and you know, the Germans are coming and then the tanks come over the hill, you know, right when they're just about to be overrun, same exact kind of thing, you get all chipped up watching that happen.

But yeah, I think it's trickier when you're trying to do it on that more subtle, non-majestic level, like you were describing, just that little moment, not people sweeping over a hill.

[00:25:23] Rob: Yeah, it's definitely a little bit more challenging because you're sort of losing that bombast, and that big sort of frenzy. But I think that if you can find those moments when characters can just step up for each other and show support for each other, I think those always really resonate with people.

Write an outline, then throw it out

[00:25:43] Matty: So we're going to move on to the sixth of the points that I pulled out of your presentation, which was write an outline and then throw it out.

[00:25:52] Rob: I was explaining this to someone recently, so this is going back to what I said about adapting things for your own process. I have this buddy, John Gingrich, who's a brilliant short story writer. And he will write a short story, and then he'll delete it.

And then a couple of days later, he'll rewrite it from memory, and to me, that's insane. I'm never gonna do that with a short story, because it's like nah, I can't delete that many words. But the reason he does it is kind of brilliant. He's like, "You know, I always remember all the good stuff. I always forget all the bad stuff, and the time in between, you know, things that I've been trying to figure out will crystallize and solidify."

And I thought there was a lot of wisdom to that. So I started doing that with my outlines, because I really like to have a pretty solid outline going into a book. It helps me sort of move through it a little bit more quickly. And I found that, you know, that first outline is kind of a mess. It's like there are parts there that I know are important, but there's a lot of just like fat there that's not really resonating for the story or there are parts that are missing or there are connections that are not making sense.

It's like I know I've got characters here and I gotta get them there and I have no idea how I'm gonna do it, so I'll just look at it and get mad and I'll delete it. And then a couple of days later I will sit down and I'll do it again and I realized as I was doing this that it would get more streamlined and it would make more sense.

Because I had had time to think about it. And it's true, like, the really good stuff you don't forget about. It's always gonna be there in your head. It's just the sort of, the fuzzier stuff starts to fall away. So, I'll do it, two, three, four times, and find that by the fourth time, the outline actually looks pretty solid.

And I think it serves a dual purpose, it helps you to not be so precious about the words. Because, again, they're gonna be there, they're inside you, you have them all. There's only so many words we know them all, we just have to put them in the right order. And so, if we can sort of come to this place of understanding that, like, hey, you know, just because I put it down on the page doesn't mean that I need to keep it.

It's a good and it's a healthy thing, you know, because I've certainly been at points where I've written something and I'm like, "Man, I love this so much, I don't want to delete it, and I have to delete it, I know I have to delete it." It's that kill your darlings thing, it's you know, just because you love something doesn't mean it works for the story. And I think this is an exercise that kind of helps make that whole process a little bit easier.

[00:28:12] Matty: I can imagine that a, like training wheels version of this, if actually deleting the word sounds alarming to people as it does to me. And I think in part because I'm a person who, like actually typing out the words is kind of the last part of the process for me. Like I'm mulling it over in my head.

And so I feel like I'm doing some of that deletion mentally. But I think a baby step could be, don't necessarily feel like if you're at the grocery store or out walking your dog or just out and about and you have an idea, you necessarily have to grab it in your note-taking app, because those are the things that I find that, I might have seven seemingly brilliant ideas while I'm walking the dog, and when I get home I've forgotten five of them.

But there's a reason I've forgotten five of them, and the two that are left are the ones that I can work on. So that could be like step one if people are kind of intrigued, but they're a little scared about the actual deletion of words idea.

[00:29:00] Rob: I like that, I like that, because I do that all the time, where I have Google Docs on the home screen of my phone, and I have a different file for everything that I'm working on. And then I will do that all the time. I'll just pick up my phone and start jotting down notes on something because something struck me.

But yeah, it's, and then sometimes I look back at them and I'm like, half of this is nonsense. I didn't need to write this down. Or like, my favorite is when I take a note and I'm like, oh, I should do this in the story, and I go back to the story and it's already there. And I'm like, man, writing books This whole process is, you do it in, a fugue state. It's ridiculous.

[00:29:34] Matty: Yeah, sometimes people will ask me if I get ideas in the middle of the night, and if I do, if I write them down and I'm like, oh no, no, that would be awful. I wouldn't want to see the results of what I would write down if I captured the things I thought about in the middle of the night.

[00:29:47] Rob: Every now and again, every now and again I get a good one. I was watching Kung Fu Panda with my daughter the other day, and there was something in the story of that movie that, kind of, crystallized a point for me. I'm writing the Assassin's Anonymous sequel now. and it was, like, an idea that I sort of, have been circling around, and I just needed it to be crystallized for me.

And watching Kung Fu Panda, I was like, Oh. Oh. That's what I'm supposed to do, so I'm just sitting there on the couch with her, just taking down notes.

[00:30:13] Matty: Well, I love the idea of wrapping up our conversation at the point where we have now gone from Rashomon to Kung Fu Panda.

[00:30:20] Rob: There we go. Can I contain multiple things?

[00:30:23] Matty: So Rob, thank you so much. I enjoyed your presentation at Writer's Digest so much, and I appreciate you encapsulating, six of your ideas here for the podcast listeners. So please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.

[00:30:34] Rob: Sure, my website is robwhart. com, I am on, Instagram and threads at robwhart1. I still kinda use Twitter at robwhart, but mostly, for promo stuff, that's a dumpster fire of a site that I'm trying to get away from, but the website is always a good place to start.

[00:30:51] Matty: Thank you so much.

[00:30:53] Rob: Alright, thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

Matty Dalrymple 4/16/24 Matty Dalrymple 4/16/24

Episode 234 - The Pocket Guide to Pantsing with Michael La Ronn

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Michael La Ronn discusses THE POCKET GUIDE TO PANTSING, including honoring what your brain is trying to do; retrospective outlining for pantsers; cycling through your story; meeting the characters where they are; surprising the reader (and yourself); the challenge of writing into the dark across a series; using AI to create a story bible (but how spreadsheets still work better than AI); differentiating fear from anxiety; and giving yourself permission to trust yourself. You can also listen to me talk myself into the viability of using pantsing for mysteries.

Michael La Ronn is the author of over forty science fiction & fantasy novels and self-help books for writers. He runs the popular YouTube channel Author Level Up and serves on the staff of the Alliance of Independent Authors as a US Ambassador, and he also co-hosts the AskALLi Member Q&A Podcast.

Episode Links

www.authorlevelup.com
www.youtube.com/authorlevelup
www.facebook.com/authorlevelup
The audiobook of Michael's THE POCKET GUIDE TO PANTSING is on YouTube for free here!

Summary

This conversation between Matty Dalrymple and Michael La Ronn about the pros and cons of "pantsing", also known as writing a novel without an outline. Michael is an advocate of pantsing, while Matty takes a more structured approach to novel writing.

Michael explains his pantsing process, which involves starting with just a basic idea for the first scene, then continuously writing 500-2,000 word chunks before going back to revise what was just written to check consistency and resonance. He essentially writes the novel in multiple passes while moving forward. This helps honor where his brain naturally wants to take the story. When he gets to around 75% done, he usually has a "glimmer" where he clearly sees how the story will end.

They discuss how some genres like historical fiction or hard sci-fi are much harder to pants, since more research is required. Michael argues that pantsing helps him get deeper into his characters' heads and emotions. Matty counters that plotting lets you shape the character arc more. They agree both approaches are valid depending on personal preference and genre; sometimes a hybrid approach works too.

Michael emphasizes meeting the characters "where they are", while Matty focuses on shaping the arc from point A to B. Matty also uses a frame or outline to give a sense of the overarching plot across a whole series of books, while allowing room for exploration. She sees both strengths and weaknesses to each approach.

They explore Michael's strategy of creating a "retrospective outline" while pantsing, by writing down high level chapter summaries, descriptions, key details to remember later. This helps when referencing back, especially for consistency across a series. Matty also keeps notes but relies more on searchable PDFs of previous books.

They discuss using AI to create story bibles summarizing key facts across a series, but the technology does not work well yet due to hallucination issues and ingesting large amounts of text. Manual spreadsheets capture key details better for now.

Overall the discussion explores pantsing as a viable alternative to outlining for some authors, with its own pros and cons. Trusting oneself and overcoming fear/anxiety of the unknown are critical to succeed. It offers efficiency but requires continuously cycling back to keep consistency. The approach resonates most with authors who wish to follow their subconscious creative voice.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to "The Indie Author Podcast." Today my guest is Michael La Ronn. Hey Michael, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Michael: I'm great, Matty. It's always good to be back.

[00:00:08] Matty: Always lovely to have you here as, I believe, one of the most frequent guests on "The Indie Author Podcast." And since you've been on the podcast so many times, I can't imagine that I need to provide an introduction, but I'm just going to say that if our viewers or listeners haven't yet delved into all the resources you offer to your fellow indie authors, I highly recommend that they check out AuthorLevelUp.com and AuthorLevelUp on YouTube. And you can also look through all my past conversations with Michael to hear a more extensive intro if necessary. So I had invited Michael on the podcast to discuss "The Pocket Guide to Pantsing," because I saw his lovely article in "Writer's Digest" magazine, and I know Michael has written and spoken extensively on this topic.

And this could almost be one of our "two perspectives on" conversations because you and I have very different approaches to this, but I think that the listeners have heard me talk about the idea of framing up a story, which is a phrase that I like better than outlining, enough. But if they haven't, they can check out my article in "Writer's Digest" about creating a story frame, which is in the July-August 2022 issue, and I'll also mention that article is in the July-August 2023 issue of "Writers Digest" magazine. People can find my article, which is now available publicly, if they go to TheIndyAuthor.com — and that's Indy with a Y — and then click on creating your story frame. And so today, we are really just going to be exploring Michael's advice on pantsing.

[00:01:32] Matty: And so, I know that a lot of people sort of get up in arms a little bit about the term pantsing. How come you describe that as opposed to one of the other terms that people use for the approach you're describing?

[00:01:43] Michael: I purely use pantsing as a marketing ploy. So when you say pantsing, everybody knows what you mean. And so I wrote a book called "The Pocket Guide to Pantsing." It just alliteration; it just worked. But there are some people, particularly across the pond, that don't like that term because pants doesn't mean pants; it means underwear.

[00:02:03] Matty: That's true, I didn't actually think of that.

[00:02:06] Michael: Yeah. So, I've had a few people say that to me and, you know, what, I get it, I understand. It's just a term that everyone uses and everyone understands. You could also use the words discovery writing or exploratory writing. Dean Wesley Smith calls it writing into the dark. There are lots of different terms for it. But ultimately, it's the process of writing a novel without an outline, and with no or very little understanding of what is going to happen before you start writing and while you're writing.

Michael's experience with outlining

[00:02:39] Matty: And have you experimented with both approaches, the more writing-into-the-dark approach and a more structured approach? Have you experimented with a structured approach?

[00:02:49] Michael: Oh, I've done both. I started off as an outliner, so I wrote my first 10 novels with outlines, and I experimented with all sorts of different outlining methods. They're the plot point method, the hero's journey, the three-act structure, snowflake method. I mean, I was a student of all those methods, and I realized that, just me personally, there's nothing wrong with the methods, but I found myself in my mind wandering a lot when I started to write.

Honoring what your brain is trying to do

[00:03:18] Michael: So I started the question like, "If I'm spending all this time outlining, only for my brain to just completely throw it out the window when I start writing, why am I wasting all my time outlining?" And so for me, it became kind of an efficiency play, like, I'm not being efficient with my time or my resources.

And so that's when I started to explore writing into the dark and pantsing out, writing without an outline, as a way to help me become more efficient and also honor what my brain was trying to do when I was writing.

[00:03:48] Matty: I think it would be useful to have you just talk through the creation of a novel from the moment you get the idea, right through, so we can have some context for further conversation about pantsing.

Like, do you do multiple passes when you're done with your writing? How close are you to a final draft? Do you have to step away from it to come back to it later with a fresh perspective? Those kinds of things.

Michael's writing process

[00:04:12] Michael: Yeah, I'll hit it at a high level and then we can go deeper into the different elements if that works. So essentially, it begins with an idea. Every novel I write, I at least know what the first scene is going to be. And that's generally a hero in a setting with some sort of problem.

That's usually all I know. I might see a few scenes throughout the novel, but they're kind of hazy. So I'll sit down, and I'll start writing, and it's kind of like moving a boulder. You just have to start, and I just start writing. I write whatever's on my heart, whatever my subconscious tells me to, and I listen very much to the little voice in my head.

Now, practically, what that looks like is I will write a chapter, go for about 500 to 1,000 words, stop, and then I'll go back, and I'll reread what I wrote, and I'll fill in little details, and then I'll continue. And I'll go another 500 to 2,000 words, stop, go back. That's a process called cycling or looping, where essentially you're writing the novel in multiple drafts, but you're doing it at the same time.

So as I go through the novel, I'm constantly cycling and looping back and rereading what I wrote to make sure that one, it makes sense; two, it's consistent; and three, it's emotionally resonant and engaging. So as I'm writing the novel, I'm constantly going back. And so when I get to the end, I'm done.

Like I'm just finished. And that works because, essentially, energy-wise, it's probably the same as writing multiple drafts, but I'm doing it as I go.

Another thing that I do as I go is I outline my novel as I go. So outliners will outline their novel before they start as a way to help them stay structured.

[00:07:29] Matty:

I outline my novel as I go to help me remember what has happened previously. And then, when I write future books in a series, I can refer to the outline instead of having to reread the book. So my outlines are always 100 percent up to date. Writing without an outline is about just following wherever your brain leads you and sometimes that can take you to some crazy places. You just simply trust the process and trust that you can get the words down, revising as you go and doing it essentially in one draft, but it's not quite one draft. Then, outlining your story as you go as well.

And it is a masterclass in learning how to tame your fear because it is an intensely emotional and intensely intimate process. You're really trusting yourself and trusting yourself to understand the story. It's not for everyone. But for those people for whom it works, when they do it, they can never go back.

And so I've just been trying to be a proponent of that and try to help as many people who have the eyes and the ears to see the method, try it, and unlock their best selves.

[00:07:29] Matty: And I would say, and I invite you to share a different perspective on this if you think, that if someone is using a more structured approach and it's working for them, they should not feel required, as like an exercise, to necessarily try pantsing. Just as someone who's pantsing and having success should not feel morally obligated to try outlining. Do you agree with that or disagree?

Finding the writing approach that fits you like a glove

[00:07:52] Michael: Oh, I agree 100%. I have strong feelings about writing into the dark and outlining because it has done wonders in my life in terms of my own self-confidence, improving my craft, and it has had immeasurable benefits in every area of my writing life, but it's not for everybody. And even though I have strong opinions, I don't think that if you feel comfort in outlining and there's something about that which resonates with your personality, by all means, don't give it up. But there are a lot of people who have bought my book and who have subscribed to my YouTube channel who have felt over the years that they have to outline just because that is kind of the predominant way, and understanding that there is another way to do it has kind of set them free.

It has liberated them. It's helped them step into the truest, best versions of their writing selves. So I just want people to find the version of writing that fits them like a glove. Whether it's outlining, pantsing, or a hybrid, it doesn't matter. I've got a lot of people who reach out to me that do a hybrid of both. Some people switch between both methods when they write novels. It doesn't matter to me. I just want to help people become practitioners if they want to pursue this method.

[00:09:11] Matty: It's interesting that of all the people I've explicitly asked about the pantsing versus plotting question on the podcast, I think all of them have been pantsers. I'm thinking specifically of Hank Phillippi Ryan, Robert Dugoni; those are the only two that are popping into my head, but I just remember because many of them are in the suspense, thriller, mystery genre, and it always surprises me when someone who's writing a mystery doesn't have at least an inkling of who the bad guy is when they start. Now, that might change, but they have an idea.

Cycling through your story

[00:09:47] Matty: But I did want to circle back to cycling to make sure I understand that. So, if you write a thousand-word chapter, let's say, and then the next day, are you reading through the thousand-word chapter, and then you're writing the second thousand-word chapter? I'm making up the numbers, so the numbers aren't important. And then the third day, you're reading through the first two. Am I understanding that correctly?

[00:10:08] Michael: Well, let's just take it in chunks. So you write Chapter One, right? At the end of Chapter One, you go back, and you reread what you wrote and you make simple edits here and there. You might change some things more substantially, and then you move on to Chapter Two. And when you're done with Chapter Two, you go back to the beginning of Chapter Two and reread and revise it.

Now, there could be times when you come across a problem. Let's just say, for example, you introduce a character, and their eyes are blue in Chapter One, and you realize, "Oh, crap, I made them purple in Chapter Three." Well, you could be way further into the novel at that point. Fix problems as they come up. So, when you're done with Chapter One, I guarantee you that is not going to be the last time you go through Chapter One because there are going to be things that come up later in the novel that require you to jump back. And so, another thing that I do as well is when I'm almost done with the novel, I will loop the entire novel.

So, say the novel is going to be 35 chapters. When I'm getting to like Chapter 32, right around the end of the final battle, and I know that I'm about to write the resolution, what I'll do is I'll jump back and I'll reread the whole thing as a final master loop, so that when I get to the end, I really am at the end.

So, cycling, looping, whatever you want to call it, it's just basically you continuously going back into the novel to stay in touch with what you wrote. And you know, that's the thing about writing into the dark: when you start, you have no idea what's going to happen most of the time. Maybe you have a little bit, but it's not very much. As you progress through the novel, you slowly start to see more. It's kind of like shining a flashlight in the dark. Eventually, you can see the whole room, and once you're near the end of the novel, you generally kind of know how it's going to end.

There's usually a moment where, you know, I call it the glimmer. It usually happens sometime around the 75 percent mark where all the lights come on and you just know exactly what's going to happen. And that's a really cool moment because it lets you race toward the end, and it gives you a lot of energy.

[00:12:30] Matty: I think it would be interesting to poll people in different genres about the plotting versus pantsing question because, well, I'll precede this by saying I think everybody at some point does both. Like, I don't think anybody writes an outline and then marches through it and never deviates from it.

A challenge of writing into the dark across a series

[00:12:49] Matty: I don't think most people go into a free writing mindset and finish it, then say, "Oh, okay, I'm going to publish that." Those are too far off the end of the spectrum on either side. An experience I just had: I'm working on the fifth "Lizzie Ballard Thriller." I've had this happen before, and I'm actually not sure whether this is a pro or con on either the plotting or pantsing side, but there was a secondary character who I was concerned would not be appealing to the reader because this character could be seen as competing for the affections of another character against the protagonist. She had a strike against her to begin with, and she was a rule follower. In thrillers, rule followers are intrinsically unappealing because that's not what you go to a thriller for.

I had finished my frame, which was probably 15-20,000 words, and I knew this was a problem. I wasn't going to be able to get through the book with her as two-dimensional and unappealing as she was in the first draft. It was only as I started fleshing things out—after I had finished my frame and was adding more description, dialogue, and other elements—that I realized something she could do that would elevate her in the eyes of the audience and make her a more empathetic and sympathetic character.

I'm glad I didn't stick with the frame until I had answered that question because I don't think I could have without doing the writing, without writing into the dark about that one character. But I also think that with a book that has an overarching plot arc, not only within the book but across the series, I would never feel comfortable not knowing how things work out. To me, it's important that I can look at the arc across all the books and say, at the end of each book, the protagonist has achieved something, and everything in the book has to lead up to that achievement.

The achievement isn't necessarily going to change, but how they get there might. Again, this is not a pro or con; I'm not arguing one way or the other, I'm just describing my process. I do think that there are some things that are helpful to have at least a high-level sense of where you're going with, for me.

And then some things I'm never going to be able to figure out until I start writing into the dark. And I think that is a strength of outlining, is that you can plan out certain things like where you want your character to begin and where you want them to end. I've always thought about characters, and I really don't think about character arcs that much when I write.

Meeting the characters where they are

[00:15:27] Michael: And again, this is just me sharing my perspectives in response to what you said. I'm far more interested in what the character is doing at any given moment because I think that readers react to that more than they react to an arc. It's a different philosophy. Writing into the dark and pantsing is really about meeting the characters where they are, while outlining is about helping characters get from point A to point B. Both schools are valid, and you could mix and match from both to get better results.

That's one of the things I learned about pantsing when I switched because I've done both. I found that my characters went from point A to point B when I was outlining, but I didn't always do a good job of conveying their emotions or how they responded to things.

When I started writing without an outline, I felt like I got much better at getting into the character's head because it was me in the moment meeting the character where they are, and I think that worked really well. Now, there are some downsides to that because you don't have an arc, necessarily, or an arc that happens is just kind of spontaneous, not really planned out, but that's all I have to say about that.

I think it's an interesting philosophy, and there's no right or wrong way. It's just what works for you.

[00:17:03] Matty: Yeah. Well, I think if people are listening to our conversation and they're resonating with one or the other more, then that's a hint at how their mind works.

[00:17:14] Michael: You did mention the genres. It would be interesting. It's a lot harder to write into the dark with historical fiction or hard science fiction that requires more research. Those are the genres that would be a lot harder to write into the dark. But there are really very few genres where this doesn't work.

Matty talks herself into the viability of using pantsing for mysteries

[00:17:43] Matty: I think one nuance of mystery that makes multiple passes, or at least the second pass, important is that if you're writing into the dark to explore who the bad guy is, I can't imagine how people do this. I've interviewed some very successful mystery authors who pants and don't go back. But I can't imagine not doing it because when I'm writing a mystery, then I go back, once I've confirmed that the person I thought did it really did it, which hasn't always been the case. I've had one book where the bad guy turned out to be someone different than I thought. Then I have to go back and plant those clues for the reader that point them at least equally to the bad guy.

I have a theory about mystery that if you implicate everyone except the person who did it, then astute readers will know who did it because they'll just say, well, they haven't planted any clues about this person, so that must be the person who did it. I think you have to implicate everyone equally, so everyone is equally likely to be the bad guy.

And I think, I mean, I suppose on that theory, you just make sure you're planting clues equally and then you decide which switch you're going to hit at the end. Maybe that's how they go about that.

Surprising yourself ... and the reader

[00:19:03] Michael: Well, that's another core tenet of writing without an outline. Dean Wesley Smith talks a lot about this: if you don't know what's going to happen in your story, then the reader won't either. If you're entertaining yourself, that will be more entertaining and engaging for the readers.

There is a level of misdirection you have to employ when writing a mystery, particularly concerning who killed someone. There are many different techniques you can use without necessarily knowing who did it. I'm not sure whether David Baldacci outlines, but he's adept at incorporating more twists than pretzels in his books. He's a great person to study for techniques to keep you guessing about the killer, which I think could also apply to pantsing.

[00:20:04] Matty: So, it doesn't surprise me that there are mystery writers out there who can do it.

[00:20:09] Michael: Maybe they have an inkling as the story progresses, but perhaps they truly don't know who the killer is when they begin. And, then you can go back and plant the seeds if you need to.

[00:20:20] Matty: I sort of talked myself out of that because, following my theory, which I still believe is true, you have to implicate everyone equally. Then you're implicating everyone equally, and you don't need to know until the end which trail of implications is true and which are false.

[00:20:39] Matty: We'd have to ponder that now.

Retrospective outlining for pantsers

[00:20:41] Matty: I wanted to go back to what you were saying about outlining retrospectively, and could you describe some ways you implement that outline, either while you're writing or perhaps after you've written the book?

[00:20:54] Michael: Yeah, it's helpful at all stages of the process. It helps me concretize my thoughts when I'm writing. You're never going to remember your novel as much as when you're writing it. If you're writing in the moment, you'll know all the details of that chapter intimately, and the further you get from that moment, the harder it becomes to remember.

So, I think of it as an insurance policy. I write down what happens in the chapter at a high level, descriptions of the setting, any character descriptions, and other details I might need to remember later, like an artifact or a particular phrase the character uses.

I do that at the end of every chapter, so later in the book, when I need to refer back, I can just look at the outline and remember, "Okay, the barn was full of hay, there were horses, and there was a lantern on the wall," for whatever reason I need to know that.

Well, I can remember that when I'm in Chapter 35 because I can go back to the outline. What's more important, though, if you're writing a series, is how much you forget from book to book. It's astounding how much I forget, even when I write books back to back.

For instance, I'll finish a novel and then jump into the next one, and suddenly I have a character doing something completely different. Wait a minute, no, that's not right. It's really easy to do. And, you know, the more time that passes between your books, the more of a problem this becomes.

So to me, the outline is really an insurance policy for when you're writing future books. It's just not efficient to have to go back and reread your entire novels every time you need to remember something. It becomes a story bible in a way.

[00:23:18] Matty: Yes, the story Bible idea is one that I'm very interested in. I recently talked with Cara Malone about using AI to help create a story bible. I'll get back to the AI aspect in a moment. I'm trying to offer two perspectives, even though I said I wouldn't. When I finish a draft, the last thing I do is have my computer read the story to me. At that point, I'm picking up on things like duplicated words or errors that a spellchecker or a writing aid might miss. And I'm trying to be more diligent about making those notes then because I know I won't be tweaking any further. God help us.

But I usually have a file on my computer with word files, actually PDFs, of all my books. So 90 percent of the time, if I'm wondering, "Did that tertiary character have a beard or mustache?" I can usually find that with some searching within the document.

Using AI to create a story bible

[00:24:16] Matty: But I had a question come up the other day, and I'm hoping that AI will soon be able to help me with it, if it can't already. I'd like to load all my books into it, then ask the AI, "Did this character ever meet this character in person?" Because there are two very important characters, and I can't remember if in the first four books they ever actually met each other in person. It makes a difference to this one plot point in book five. Are you experimenting at all with AI for story bibles, or does the story bible approach you're describing address that question?

[00:24:54] Michael: Okay, so yes, I have experimented with this. I have experimented with it in ChatGPT. ChatGPT Plus has a feature that allows you to create custom GPTs, and the benefit of custom GPTs is it's like a customized mini version of ChatGPT that you can train by uploading knowledge documents.

So in theory, what you should be able to do is upload manuscripts of all your novels in a series, have that become the training document for ChatGPT, and then you would be able to ask it questions, just like you said. In practice, it does not work right now, and the reason for it is because it hallucinates.

It also has some difficulty ingesting large amounts of text. I mean, it can ingest a PDF, but the longer the text, the more challenging it becomes. It often gives a lot of false positives. I tested this about a month ago, quite extensively with a series I've got that has about seven books right now.

And it didn't give me any results that I liked. There were things that were wrong, things that were not quite right. It made up characters. So, I do think that the architecture is there, and at some point, whether it's GPT-5 or a future version, I do think it will be able to help us create story bibles in exactly the way that you mentioned.

[00:26:28] Michael: In the meantime, I just use a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, and that works because I can filter it by character, I can filter it by scene, and I can find what I'm looking for quickly. The goal is to find something on your outline faster than you can find it in your book, and that just takes practice.

It's ultimately about figuring out what sorts of questions you find yourself asking and making sure that you capture those questions as you're writing.

[00:27:03] Matty: The benefit of that spreadsheet approach, rather than searching within a PDF book by book, is that if you're keeping one big spreadsheet of all your notes about a series, you could say, "Show me all the ways I've described this character's house."

And then you could say, "Oh, yeah, well, in book one, they only ever went into the living room. But then in book two, they had the opportunity to go upstairs." And then I have to remember this part of it; it would be nice to see the development of that over a series as well as within a book, which is what I'm limited to when I'm using the search approach.

[00:27:39] Michael: Yeah, and what I do is write down the key details. So if there's a detail that I think is going to be repeated or that I would like to repeat, those are the ones I write down. And that helps me. You mentioned the house; it's funny because I do the exact same thing. I've got a character in the series I'm writing right now, "The Good Necromancer," where his house is a really important part of the series.

And in every book, he goes into a different area of the house. So I have to remember what rooms he's in, what's in there, and also what he's said about them. You know, because he gives some history and some details about it, because it's a historic home. So things like that are really helpful to keep in your outline.

[00:28:24] Matty: Yeah, I realized that across all my books and short stories, there are a couple of go-to home decor styles that I use, and I try to keep that varied. But I was thinking, when you were talking about the danger of an AI hallucinating when trying to give you story Bible information, I wonder if, at the point where the AI is better at ingesting large quantities of data but is still hallucinating, you could address that by saying, "Let me know if Character A has ever met Character B in person, and show me the text where that happens." And then if you still didn't trust it, you could actually search your master documents for that text to make sure that it hadn't made up the reference text it was giving you.

[00:29:11] Michael: You could, but you know, if you have to still go back into the reference text, then I think you've kind of defeated the purpose.

[00:29:17] Matty: Yeah. Just switching over to a quite different topic, do you pair a word count goal with your pantsing approach?

[00:29:26] Michael: Not really. I tend to write a lot of words. So, most of the time, you know, I don't really care. I'm going to write a couple thousand words a day, most of the time. Usually, at the beginning of a novel, I usually will write less because I'm still exploring, and I like to take my time to establish the setting, the characters, and the stakes and everything like that.

And so, I give myself permission to write fewer words. Usually, it's the first week, I will write fewer words and then, once I feel comfortable and things really start to take off, then I'll start swinging for the fences.

[00:30:08] Matty: Or running for the hills, depending.

[00:30:11] Michael: I love torturing analogies. It's one of my favorite things to do.

[00:30:14] Matty: Well, one of the things I wanted to ask is, if someone is using or experimenting with the pantsing approach, the writing into the dark approach, and now they're in a dark room and they don't know where they're going, and they've panicked, you know, when you get stuck in a pantsing scenario, do you have any recommendations for how people get past that?

[00:30:30] Michael: Yes, I do. And the biggest recommendation is that it is psychological. There is something about writing into the dark that really forces us to look inside ourselves and understand who we really are. And a lot of the problems that people have when they're staring at the blinking cursor in a dark room is that they're afraid. It's fear. And understanding the nature of what fear really is, is something that can set you free.

Differentiating fear from anxiety

[00:31:03] Michael: So, if you don't mind, I'll tell a story. So, have you heard of Gavin De Becker? He's a security consultant who has built his career protecting valuable people.

He wrote a book called "The Gift of Fear." In it, he talks about how fear is actually a biological response that is engineered to save your life.

There's a story he tells about a guy who's surfing and gets attacked by a great white shark. The shark is eating him, and he starts fighting the shark. They say to blind the shark, you know, jam your thumbs in the shark's eyes. He does that and the shark lets him go. But the guy doesn't let go of the shark. The shark starts swimming down into the ocean and he's holding on. Why would you do that, right? He gets to the ocean floor, and something tells him to let go of the shark, and he swims up and lives to tell about it. That is fear. Fear makes you do things that you would not normally do as a way to save your life.

[00:33:26] Michael: Now, there's also anxiety, which presents in much the same way as fear when you're staring at the blinking cursor: your heart rate's going to go up, your blood pressure is going to go up a little bit, your pupils are going to dilate, and you're going to have shallow breathing. But you're not in any danger of being eaten. Fear and anxiety may seem like the same thing, but they are not. He says that anxiety is a response to something that you imagine or that you remember.

So when you're staring at the blinking cursor, you're probably imagining that the story's not going to work, that readers won't like it, imagining all sorts of things that can go wrong that really have no basis in reality. It's just your brain playing tricks on you. And when you understand that, you can make a decision.

[00:33:26] Michael: To stop being afraid of things that you imagine or remember, and it will set you free. Now, I know it's not any consolation because you still don't know what's going to happen in your story, but it's giving yourself permission to trust yourself. That is absolutely critical because we writers are really sensitive and emotional people, and that's why we're able to do what we do. But the downside is that because we're sensitive and emotional, we live inside our heads a lot.

Learning how to stop doing that is, I think, the first key to learning how to write into the dark successfully.

[00:34:04] Matty: So, I'm going to belabor the shark story just a bit to explore a question. That is, I can imagine that somebody does the equivalent of continuing to hold onto the shark even after it dives. They're staring at the blinking cursor, their blood pressure is going up, and they decide to grab the shark by the eyeballs. They start writing whatever pops into their head to get past the block. Then the shark dives, and they hang on. In the sense of continuing to write whatever they've chosen to get past that hump, it carries them through the entire rest of the book. For some, what would be a mind-clearing exercise turns into a path that pulls them into the depths, taking them into more danger.

Do you have any thoughts on how people can identify when they've taken a wrong turn? Are there red flags they should watch out for that suggest they're sticking with an idea too long?

[00:35:38] Michael: Okay, so, you're making an assumption, if I may. You're assuming that the words you write to get out of a corner are bad or are just a writing prompt. That's not always the case. In fact, most of the time, when people have writer's block, they think the words they're writing are really bad.

You know, how do you back up from that? And I think you ultimately, what I think is when you get to a chapter and you're staring at the blinking cursor, often the reason, one of the reasons that can happen is because you went astray somewhere just before where you are. So what I encourage people to do is to look back.

You know, it's sometimes the, on a plane, they say the nearest exit may be behind you. It could be that something you wrote 500 words ago, that's what went off the rails. And maybe you just need to backtrack a little bit, figure out what that is, and then you can go down another path. And I think that's, that's a far more productive way to think about it than thinking about, well, am I completely going down a rabbit hole?

Do I need to blow up the whole novel or that sort of thing? Usually the problems are right there in front of you. You just got to figure out what they are.

[00:37:50] Matty: So cool. Well, Michael, thank you so much for the conversation. It was always super fun to talk to you about almost anything. And you always have such practical advice to offer. So please let the listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.

[00:38:05] Michael: Yeah, you can find all the things I'm doing at AuthorLevelUp.com. I've got a book called "The Pocket Guide to Pantsing" that covers everything we talked about today. And it's also got their links to my fiction on that website as well.

[00:38:18] Matty: So great. Thank you so much.

[00:38:21] Michael: Thanks, Matty. Always my pleasure.

Matty Dalrymple 4/9/24 Matty Dalrymple 4/9/24

Episode 233 - Data-Driven Publishing with Pamela Fagan Hutchins

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Matty Dalrymple talks with Pamela Fagan Hutchins about DATA-DRIVEN PUBLISHING, including business and creative collaboration with a publisher; the rise of "super indie / alt traditional”; changing one's genre or plotting approach based on the data; battling imposter syndrome; the danger of violating reader expectations and the power of targeting the enthusiastic sub-genre fan; and the value of writing between bright lines. If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is a USA Today bestselling and Amazon All Star mystery / thriller / suspense author who believes in soulmates, loves to laugh, and lives out the adventures in her books at a rustic lake camp at Maine’s Mooselook Lake and in an off-the-grid lodge on the face of Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains with her husband, sled dogs, and draft horses. She was also a guest on an installment of my video series What I Learned, when we talked about her book HER LAST CRY.

Episode Links

https://pamelafaganhutchins.com
https://www.facebook.com/pamela.fagan.hutchins.author
https://www.instagram.com/pamela_fagan_hutchins/
https://www.youtube.com/pamelafaganhutchins

Summary

In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, host Matty Dalrymple and Pamela Fagan Hutchins, a bestselling mystery thriller/suspense author. The discussion focuses on Pamela's transition from being an independent ("indie") author to signing a contract with Bookouture, a digital publishing imprint of Hachette UK. Pamela describes Bookouture as a "super indie/alt-traditional" publisher that is highly data-driven in their approach.

One significant change Pamela discussed was Bookouture asking her to write a police procedural genre instead of her previous amateur sleuth and legal thriller books. Pamela was initially hesitant due to impostor syndrome, as she had no direct experience as a police officer. However, she embraced the challenge, seeking guidance from subject matter experts like police chiefs and sheriffs to ensure authenticity and accuracy.

Another critical shift was in Pamela's plotting approach. Her previous method was more organic, while Bookouture pushed her to adopt a structured five-act structure with a strong midpoint at around 49-51% of the book. This midpoint was meant to provide a significant revelation or plot twist to propel the reader towards the conclusion. Pamela acknowledged that incorporating this structural change was initially difficult but improved with each book, as her editor at Bookouture provided guidance.

Interestingly, Pamela mentioned that Bookouture was willing to change book covers if the initial designs were not performing well, something traditional publishers are often reluctant to do. This flexibility allowed for quick pivots and adjustments based on data and reader feedback.

Pamela also discussed the data-driven nature of Bookouture's decision-making. Their data suggested that readers preferred police procedurals with law enforcement protagonists, leading them to request that change from Pamela. While Pamela did not have direct access to Bookouture's data, she acknowledged that their decisions were informed by insights into reader preferences and buying patterns.

A notable challenge Pamela faced was introducing her existing indie readers to her new Bookouture books, which had a slightly different branding and style. She made efforts to align her indie branding and pricing with Bookouture's to signal continuity to her readers. Bookouture was supportive of these efforts, encouraging Pamela to maintain her independent success while collaborating with them.

Pamela highlighted the value of adaptability and writing within specific guidelines, which, though initially restrictive, can focus an author's attention and improve their craft. She emphasized the importance of understanding one's motivations for writing – whether for personal expression or commercial success – and tailoring one's approach accordingly.

In conclusion, the transcript provides valuable insights into the collaborative relationship between an author and a data-driven digital publisher. It highlights the potential benefits of such partnerships, including access to broader reader insights, structured guidance on plotting and genre choices, and the flexibility to make quick adjustments based on data. However, it also underscores the challenges of balancing creative freedom with commercial considerations and effectively introducing a new audience to an established author's work.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Pamela Fagan Hutchins. Hey, Pamela, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Pamela: Hi, Matty. I'm great. How are you?

[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great also.

Meet Pamela Fagan Hutchins

[00:00:09] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Pamela Fagan Hutchins is a USA Today bestselling and Amazon All-Star Mystery Thriller suspense author who believes in soulmates, loves to laugh, and lives out the adventures in her books at a rustic lake camp in Maine's Mooselook Lake. And if you watched an earlier video, you'll know why I'm emphasizing Maine. And in an off-the-grid lodge in the face of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains with her husband, sled dogs, and draft horses. She was also recently a guest on my video series, "What I Learned," where we talked about her book, "Her Last Cry," and there I accidentally identified Mooselook Lake as in Minnesota. So, apologies to Maine, one of my favorite states, for making that mistake.

[00:00:43] Pamela: At least looking at such a small community, you offended very few people. A hundred at most.

[00:00:53] Matty: Well, still, I don't want to offend anyone in Maine as my second adoptive home there.

So it was actually our conversation about "Her Last Cry" that led me to invite Pamela to the podcast because we started talking about some changes to her publishing approach that I'm going to ask her to describe in a moment. And we wanted to talk about data-driven book creation.

What is "super indie/alt traditional"?

[00:01:14] Matty: Pamela, I thought it would be useful to start right out having you describe for our listeners what that big change recently happened in your publishing approach.

[00:01:23] Pamela: Well, I've gone from being a dyed-in-the-wool, rebellious, you can't control me indie for the last 12 years to signing a contract with Bookouture, they're with Hachette UK, and I think of them as, these are my words, not theirs, but what attracted me to them was I think of them as super indie or alt-traditional as a digital publisher that is extremely driven by learning from data.

[00:01:51] Matty: Yeah, I'm kind of a student of Bookouture, and one of the things that has led to is that I'm kind of struggling with a different way of representing indie versus traditional because I don't think that's the case anymore. I just think that professional indies have learned so much from the good stuff that the traditional publishing world has to offer. And the traditional publishers are starting to learn from what the indies are doing well. And I think Bookouture is a great example of an organization that's kind of tapping into the best of both worlds. So it's definitely a spectrum. It's not an either/or if it ever was. And I just think it's a fascinating company to follow. And you must have too.

[00:02:31] Pamela: I do too, and a mutual friend of ours is who I really got interested in originally, because of Lisa Regan, and she was so happy with them. We started chatting and I thought, "Wow, that sounds really smart." It sounded smart to me because it's what I've been trying to do in a smaller way on my own for 12 years. And all of a sudden, here was someone doing it bigger on behalf of a large number of authors with some very successful books. And I just salivated after all that data. How can you not want to be part of using good data to its highest possibility? I only have a small amount of data compared to them. I want their data. And I don't get their data, but I get the use of their data. I get to learn from their data.

And the other thing I really liked about them is, first of all, they embrace authors from the indie space because they don't have any snobbery to it, right? There's no "Oh, you're indie, you're dirty, we won't touch you." It's "Can you write? Can you sell books? Okay, we can do something with that. I think that falls in what we do. So cool, let's all play together." And they encourage you to continue whatever is working for you outside their space as well. Whether it's multiple publishers, indie career, keep those going. Just don't step on each other's toes. We put together schedules and things that honor that with each other.

The Value of Adaptability

[00:03:55] Matty: One of the things that I've really been impressed with, from what I've heard and read about Bookouture, is its willingness to pivot. And I think because it is digital-only, there are things they can do like changing up a cover if the first one isn't working, as opposed to having 50,000 copies of a print book in a warehouse somewhere. That's the cover that people are going to be seeing for the next decade, which I'm a big fan of.

[00:04:22] Pamela: Exactly. I think it's wonderful. A friend of mine early on told me, "Oh, think twice about Bookouture because they'll change your cover on you at the last second." And I was like, "Wait, that's what I like about them." I like that they're willing to say, "We were wrong, and we're going to do better in the long run by changing now than just letting this title not work after all the work that went into it." Letting it not work as a vehicle to reach readers because of some antiquated notion that "that's the cover, forever, we will never change it because we shipped it from China with 48,000 of its friends on a boat."

[00:05:03] Matty: I'm surprised at that reaction. Was that reaction about "watch out for them because they'll change your cover at the last minute," did you have a sense of what was driving that reaction?

[00:05:12] Pamela: That it ruins publicity. That you have these moments to publicize, and the cover reveal is one of them. Here you've done the cover reveal, you've created the impressions, and now you're changing it out on people. But frankly, as an indie, I've changed some of my book covers five times. I just keep playing with them and testing them through ads until I find what's working best right now, usually a series lead, right? The rest of them don't matter as much. I want to hook them on that first book, and so with "Saving Grace," which is the very first book in my "What Doesn't Kill You" super series, first book in the Katie Connell series within that, and "Switchback," which is my lead in my Patrick Blintz books, I've changed those covers over and over. I don't have anything tied to an identity with it or anything else. It's about what's working now. What makes someone say, "That's the book I want to read," when they hit that page. And we get it wrong, which is one of the reasons I wanted to work with somebody else, frankly. I felt like I was too emotionally invested in things like titles, descriptions, covers. That was my weakness. I felt like I could write well enough anyway, and that was my weakness. I was the one calling those shots, and maybe that needed to be a more data-driven decision.

Changing One's Genre Based on the Data

[00:06:32] Matty: There were a couple of things that we talked about earlier that were places where your writer life changed as a result of partnering up with Bookouture. And I'm going to throw them out, and we can take this conversation wherever. But one of the things that you had mentioned that was very interesting is not only does an author obviously get tied to their cover and description and so on, but also their genre. And so one of the things that Bookouture asked you to do was to write a police procedural. Could you describe a little bit about where that request came from and what your reaction to it was?

[00:07:05] Pamela: I had all these long, lovely conversations with the woman who is my editor now, before I'd signed with them. She'd say, "Great, we want to work with you, and we love this book, but we'd like you to change it from X to Y,” from what it is now to a police procedural. And I kept saying no, I don't think so. At one point, I literally said to them, "You know what? I'm going to go away for a year and we can talk again later, but I'm going to go ahead and write more books in this series because I believe in this book and I'm going to do it now." And they were like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's talk again." And I thought we'd reached a point where it was going to be amateur sleuth again because it was really an unconventional sleuth, not a cozy. I'm not a cozy writer, but an unconventional sleuth, meaning non-police.

And somehow we ended up again with, I was going to start immediately and start a police procedural. At which point, my husband and I, who collaborate closely on both our careers—I am his other half in his career, he's my other half in mine—we said, "If we're going to do this, let's just do it. You want to learn from them, you want to break yourself free of things that may be holding you back by working with them, just go ahead and do it." And so I said yes, and immediately called our dear friend who's a police chief and said, "Help me!" And he has.

[00:08:21] Matty: So, what was it specifically that was deterring you from pursuing a police procedural?

[00:08:28] Pamela: That impostor syndrome, feeling like a fraud. I had been the things that were often at the helm or the protagonist's main career or avocation. Whatever it was that stood out as their identity, I could identify with, in my other books, either through a close family member or myself, I felt I could write them with authority. And authenticity is really important to me, getting things right. I had never been a cop. I'd been a private investigator; I'd been a lawyer, but I'd never been a cop, and I was scared. It turned out that with the help of others, I could handle that just as well as I did any of those other fields.

[00:09:09] Matty: And did your publisher provide any help in terms of getting you the information that you felt you needed, or was that really on you as the author to find the subject matter experts to tap into?

[00:09:20] Pamela: I never asked them to help me, so they might have, but I did it on my own, and I told them what I was doing. I actually reached out to the sheriff and the undersheriff in our county. The sheriff was wonderful, but it ended up I relied on the police chief more heavily even though I was writing something that was more rural and was a sheriff's department.

But I found that the law enforcement people, most of them found it fun. Some were nervous. Some were like, "Oh, don't tie my name to that." But I found just the right guy, one who's ready for me to crow his name and find him lots of writers to work with.

[00:09:53] Matty: Yeah, as I often say on the podcast, it is fun to find those subject matter experts who know inside and out what happens in real life but are willing to say, "Well, yeah, that normally wouldn't happen, but you could make it work if this." Like, "Oh, I love you. Yes."

[00:10:07] Pamela: There's nothing worse than the expert who says, "But it just wouldn't happen." And you're like, "Hmm, can't or wouldn't?" Wouldn't is good. Wouldn't is exactly where we're pushing to. We want something that is more exciting than every day.

[00:10:21] Matty: Yes, if the books were all about what happens every day, then nobody would be reading them.

[00:10:24] Pamela: Exactly. Yeah. So, that was different for me, but I've enjoyed it. I'm on the fourth book in the series right now, and I'm feeling more confident about trusting my instincts and knowing we can fix it later, and saving some of my questions for Travis, my consultant, until we're down the road.

[00:10:43] Matty: And we can fix it later is related to the details that you put in about--

[00:10:49] Pamela: Yeah, and I want to strike a balance between my details being correct and not burdening a book with details. And I found that one of the things that's good about me never having been a cop is I am not, I don't feel burdened by the details. I want as little as possible so that we can keep the pace of the book up. And I'm not constrained by needing to include all this background and all this detail, etc. Because to me, it's meaningless. I really think of it more like a reader. How do we get from point A to point B, while doing it correctly, but on the edge of vigilantism, and not getting thrown in jail.

So we don't get fired or thrown in jail today; it's roughly what a cop could and would do, and yet we get there fast enough to satisfy a reader who wants to read a thriller.

[00:11:36] Matty: Yeah, I think that, the idea of what details do you leave out, I was at a talk that James McCrone gave at the Brandywine Valley Writers Group meeting last night, and I think he was quoting Keith Richards, or maybe about songwriting, but it was, "You're not done when you have nothing else to say, you're done when you've taken out everything you can." Something to that effect, but I thought it was great words to live by for authors.

[00:12:04] Pamela: I think that's fantastic. It's one of the things I find challenging when I write books that are written more by people who are subject matter experts, is that it's harder for them. The ones that have that expertise and can leave out enough are spectacular. That's what I want to aim toward.

Changing one's plotting approach

[00:12:24] Matty: Absolutely. Genre is obviously a pretty central thing that you were asked to change, but another really important thing that you were asked to change was your plotting approach. So can you describe what your plotting approach was before, what your publisher asked you to change it to, and how that change went for you?

[00:12:41] Pamela: My plotting approach was pretty much "throw it all to the wall until it sticks" and get there somehow. And I roughly was embracing a three-act structure, really it's a five-act structure, with an inciting incident somewhere at, say, 15 to 20 percent of the way into the book, then three major acts, and then an act five, which is your ending, your denouement. That's how I looked at it. I did a lot of work on these in the past. I would print all my pages out, in a two-page book format, tape them to the floor, go through with highlighters, and look for continuity issues, see if I was dividing the acts up correctly. But in dividing the acts up correctly, what I wasn't thinking about was the midpoint of the book.

The midpoint of the book is the midpoint of the middle act. I was thinking about the beginnings and ends of acts and how do you get between those. So when my first draft came in, they said, "We really need a midpoint." And I'm like, "Talk to me about this midpoint." So they had me read a book called "Into the Woods" by John Yorke. So I read "Into the Woods," and for the most part, I was going, "Yeah, yeah, this is what I do," until I got to the part about the midpoint, which basically was, this is the point at which you move from what you didn't know towards having some kind of explosion of knowledge or a change point that leads to, at the end, your acceptance of what you've discovered, your reawakening, your endpoint.

And that your big moment of key discovery is right there at the end, between 49 and 51 percent, hit it right on the nose, Pamela. And I went through and, sure enough, for a crime thriller, I did not have that huge key discovery, which in a crime thriller, one would expect also to come with some whiz-bang, right? You want something at risk so that the protagonist is pushed forward into the second half of the book, resolving whatever it is they've now discovered and can't avoid resolving.

I'd always thought of it more as an inciting incident, and then you have an act, and an act, and an act, and an ending, and that whiz-bang in the middle was missing. So I did that. The first structural edit was just awful. But then the second was good.

And by the time we got to "Her Last Cry," the third book in the series, my editor gave it a kiss and a hug and said, "By George, I think you've got it." And now I'm writing book four. And literally last night, that's what I was doing, was looking at what I'd written so far, realizing I'd crested what I intend to be the midpoint, and that I needed to revisit it before I moved on, because my key discovery was there, but I didn't have enough whizbang. So anyway, I went back, and that's what I did this morning, was worked on my midpoint, because to me now, I really think of the book in two halves, as the biggest structure, and then I obviously also think of it in all those little micro pieces as well.

[00:15:56] Matty: I want to loop back to the same question for genre because I realized I kind of lost the thread of the data-driven thing. But talking about the structure, did you ever get a sense of what data your publisher or editor had that was leading them to push you so forcefully toward this structural approach?

[00:16:16] Pamela: No, I don't really know, from a data perspective, what they have that pushes them toward that point, other than it is their predominant theory of how you structure books and that they sell a lot of books. And when you master that, they feel it pushes their readers through the book and into buy-through, if they're buying the books, or read-through if it's on Kindle Unlimited.

My suspicion, and it's a question I didn't actually ask them, was that their data came from series writing and moving on to the next book. Someone can buy your book and stop at 47 percent because it wasn't satisfying, or they can stop at 75 percent because you didn't show them a compelling enough reason to be pushed from this key discovery towards the inevitable ending. That was my feeling.

The genre issue was much clearer. They were saying their data shows that their readers prefer police procedural or crime fiction that has a law enforcement detective, usually, as the protagonist. This isn't all readers; it's the readers they can reach, their data, specific to them and who they have reached in the past, and as a result, keep expanding into selling more too. For this particular portion of their business, because they have multiple genres, but for crime fiction, their data showed that they didn't do as well with Amateur Sleuth, except in the cozy space. They didn't do as well with what I was writing when I came to them, which was more of a legal thriller. That just didn't translate to series that took off and were worth sticking around for a few more books.

[00:18:02] Matty: It's interesting that this can be extrapolated on a micro level for an individual indie author. I don't think anybody has a favorite publishing imprint, but Bookouture books are very distinctive looking. You can run through a montage of the top 100 Kindle books or top 100 selling eBooks, and you can kind of pick out which ones are Bookouture books. They're very heavily color-saturated with a natural scene with an object in it, like a barn or a boat. You can see them and know, "Oh, that's a book like this other book that I read and really liked." I can imagine they're using data because you have a sense of what readers everywhere are looking for, and you home in on that. Or you kind of create your own data because if they've now trained Bookouture readers to recognize the books, and then to expect that between 49 and 51 percent there's going to be that midpoint moment, then you're satisfying a reader expectation that you've created. A publisher can create an expectation among a pool of readers in a way that maybe an indie author over many books can do, but you're exponentially expanding the expectation setting if you're doing it through a publisher.

The danger of violating reader expectations

[00:19:22] Pamela: But I think that's a really good point. When I reached books 12 through 15 in my "What Doesn't Kill You?" super series, which as I wrote it was probably 9 through 11, but I pushed them to the end of the series because they didn't perform well. I'm convinced the reason they didn't perform well is because I moved out of what I had set reader expectations to be.

I took a character that I, one of my favorite characters, and I personally think the books are great. I think the books are great, but they were not what readers had come to expect from my protagonist in my first few times giving protagonists their turns at bat, and the sales showed that.

And to take that another step further, by doing this with Bookouture, I've taken a two-year chunk out of what I'm doing, right, because I'm on books four through six with them right now. And I'm not meeting reader expectations because I was writing amateur sleuths. My covers looked like my covers. There were no serial killers, or there were, but they didn't get a point of view. This is a very big difference in this genre they asked me to write versus what I was writing. I still had multiple murders in my books; people are dying left and right, but I never did the antagonist, the nasty bad guy point of view in my books. Bookouture's brands their crime fiction towards what their data shows them is the way to brand it that will reach the most readers, their readers and hopefully additional readers. That brand doesn't necessarily match what reaches mine.

So it's been a struggle for my readers to realize that these are A, my books, and B, they should be their books. Even though when you open them, they're still Pamela Fagan Hutchins books. Very character-driven, you're going to fall in love with this kick-ass protagonist, and there's no glorification of serial killers, and people aren't getting mutilated on the page. But that isn't so clear to them from the brand, so it's all been very interesting, their data versus my data, and where in the end this will have us all end up, right?

But teaching my readers to shop outside of the brand to get me has been interesting. I changed all my covers, some of my descriptions, fonts, everything. I changed my website, I changed my pricing, all trying to signal, "It's okay, we're all the same. This is the still Pamela." But it was an interesting shift and we're not there yet.

[00:22:11] Matty: Did you alert your publisher that you were making changes in your independently published books to make them visually more similar to theirs? Were they concerned about that at all?

[00:22:23] Pamela: No, what they want is for those over 3 million books that I have out there in people's hands to bring those readers with me while also wanting their readers to embrace me. What they didn't want, which is contractually prohibited, is for me to release books 45 days before or after they release one of my books so that our advertising doesn't overlap. Our major advertising pushes can't completely avoid overlap because you always have to be doing something for your indie books, or they'll die, and you'll never get it back. But they were like, "Whatever you can do to bring your people along."

We coordinate on newsletters—I have a list of 15,000—and how do I bring them along? What does it look like for authors with medium to big lists when we coordinate with what you're sending out? Coordinating on advertising, when they're advertising, what do I do, etc.

All of that, we've been trying to signal to my readers that it's okay, these serial killers aren't going to get you. They've been really cooperative with that and very open when they think they don't want me to do something, asking me please not to do X or Y.

They may not love everything that I do, but I know that they do have some of us, because some of us bridge indie and this new world of digital publishing, which is quasi-indie or alt-traditional, whatever you want to call it. We get way more into their business on this than their other authors do. The ones that come from traditional are like, "Okay, you take care of it," and I'm like, "What were the numbers like?" I literally woke up last night because there's a price promo running on book two in the series, and the rank tanked for 24 hours, so I wrote a letter to my editor asking what happened, what didn't scale, and expressing concern about not being able to pivot very fast. Then I didn't send it because I know they're aware. But it's my first inclination. If it were me controlling this advertising campaign and the spend increased but the rank went in the wrong direction, I'd say I had the wrong audience, but I've already told them that, so they know.

[00:24:49] Matty: So when you, in other circumstances where maybe you've sent the email or you've talked through it with them, have there been other circumstances and how does that interaction with them work where they have one group of authors who are saying "you take care of it" and the other, a second group of probably indie authors who want to be more involved in it? What has been your experience with how they receive that?

Business and creative collaboration with a publisher

[00:25:10] Pamela: They're so polite, first of all, because they're British, so I'm not really sure what they really think of me. But when I say, "I'm so sorry, I know that I care a whole lot about this, maybe more than your other authors, and here's why," they've actually invited me to give them more feedback, and I've caught them in some boo-boos. They're not perfect, they're humans. We had some things that on the first promo they did didn't go real well. And when they finished it, they said, "What would you have done differently?" And they literally got on the phone with me and said, "What is it that you see that may have gone wrong here? What can we learn from this? Because you're right, this didn't go like we expected." And it was nice to have that conversation.

Yeah, the second one is going better. Notwithstanding me wanting to send that email this morning. But going much better. I think they were having like a 35 percent conversion rate on people who clicked on the ad, and they were really excited about that, that was 10 points better than their normal conversion.

So, I think that when you do work together, especially when you're trying to combine audiences, if you will, they want my audience, I want theirs, or they want my readers, I want theirs. Audience is probably the wrong word. I'm thinking in terms of ads, which is audience, but at the end of the day, those are readers. And when we're trying to strategize on how to find the readers that are going to love this book out of their readers and my readers and the whole world of readers and collaborate on it, that's been nice. I didn't expect it.

They also changed my covers when I didn't think that they were going to work. And I was told never to expect that they would ever change a cover. And they changed all three of them. I wasn't ugly or anything. I was just like, "Those are barns in Kansas. And these books are set in Wyoming. And honestly, those aren't the same places, you know?" And they were like, "Okay, you're right. We really looked at this too much from an 'America is America' perspective and not what really shows the ruggedness of these books." So they changed them all. I thought that was cool.

[00:27:13] Matty: Any publisher is probably going to have more data than any individual independent author. Did you feel that the areas where you were able to bring more value in terms of maybe correcting some misdirection were more personal or because of reader interaction? You're not tapping into a giant database. So where did you have the edge in those conversations?

[00:27:37] Pamela: I have a lot of engagement with readers. And while you can't take what any one person says, a lot of times, if you get a couple of people saying something in different places, they're representing a large number of people; they're just the ones that spoke up. So if I get a couple of data points spread out over different platforms, I start to think they're saying something here and I should listen.

I started getting people saying, "I'm so glad I read your book. I really was afraid that it was a serial killer book. And I was really afraid to read it." Bookouture was saying, "Your pre-orders were fantastic. They were the best we've had in a very long time for a new series. And then we didn't get the sales we thought we'd get once the books launched. Do you have a feeling for why?" And I said, "I don't think my readers are coming to the party. And I don't think they're coming because of something that I don't think you're going to change. But it's the description of the book. It doesn't read like what they're used to reading."

They're trying to please the hardcore crime thriller readers, and my readers are trying to move to crime thriller from where I had them. You open the book, and it's a combination of crime thriller and Pamela Fagan Hutchins, and my readers are happy, but some of them are scared. So, I think we're getting late adopters.

We're trying to figure out how to bring my people along at the same time as we bring the world along with it. It's going to be hit or miss. The conversation was very much about what I would be doing differently, how I would adjust the audience. We were talking ads, basically. What would you be looking for?

I was able to come back to them a day later and say, "That feeling I had, that the ads weren't reaching the right readers when you did the 99-cent price promo with heavy Facebook advertising. They were using their proprietary ad groups, and the day after the promo finished, all my also-boughts on the series were British-based crime drama. That's not who's going to ultimately fan me. I'm more like C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Jeff Carson, D.K. Hood, the people that write Mountain West, rural, rugged, etc. Amazon is telling me these are the people who responded to your ads, and that says that's who received your ads. If I was looking at what to do differently, I'd be thinking long term, which is, are these going to be devoted fans of these books? And you haven't convinced me that the answer is yes yet. So that's what I'd be looking at: Are we reaching the right people?"

[00:30:24] Matty: That's interesting because that's data that anybody can have access to. You don't need a giant corporate database to do that.

[00:30:29] Pamela: Exactly. Look at your also-boughts the day after you run a promo, you've got more data than you're ever going to have, but a lot of it disappears very quickly, right? Those change every single day, so it's a matter of looking at your own data while it's hot. It's there because it's going to go away. I mean, I look at things like rank every single day for my top six books, my series leads, and my new releases just because it's an indicator of what's happening. But looking at those also-boughts right after a big promo, that tells you who bought your book. It's the closest you're ever going to get to knowing with Amazon.

Targeting the enthusiastic sub-genre fan

[00:31:11] Matty: Any conversation about reader targeting that I've ever heard assumes that if you're writing cozies, you're finding the people who read all cozies all the time. If you have a very niche romance, you're looking for those people. But I've got to believe that there are a lot of readers out there like me, who one day are reading chick-lit, the next nonfiction history, then a sci-fi series, then a police procedural. I feel like a successful publisher with access to all this data is almost incented to target the enthusiasts of a specific sub-genre, like readers of C.J. Box but not Liane Moriarty, whereas in reality, I think there's a lot more overlap in real life than any publisher, indie or traditional, is allowing for. Do you agree with my assessment, and do you think an indie author or a publisher is better positioned to tap into readers who have a wider interest?

[00:32:34] Pamela: I think that for an indie author who's been at it for a while, you potentially have a better ability to tap into that wider interest because you're doing it specifically for your books, as opposed to a group of books where you're getting more granular. You're grouping the books and readers together.

I do agree that people read broadly, but with advertising, your best conversion comes from targeting your best converter. You're looking for someone that sees your image and your copy and immediately thinks, "This is for me!" So when planning my advertising, I'm looking for the superfans of the genre, the superfans of what I write, and then hoping that through their recommendations and their reviews, they bring other people along with them.

But I'm looking for the most efficient use of my spend. So, I agree with you, and when targeting, I would really focus on those superfans.

[00:33:41] Matty: It's always tough to distinguish the marketing targeting from the creative process because I know that I limit my own ability to reach readers because I have to write the things that are of interest to me, not necessarily the things that I think will do best in the market. And so, if I could train my creative brain to be more disciplined in that way, I'd probably be doing better. But on the other hand, I probably wouldn't be writing books. Kind of doesn't matter.

[00:34:06] Pamela: I do the same thing. When I sat down to write this series for Bookouture, I first wanted to make the protagonist an MMA fighter. I wanted her to be really badass and it just interested me at the time. And they were like, "Our data says that women who actually physically fight in an organized fashion are a turnoff. She can still kick some ass if she wants to, but it needs to not be in an official capacity." At first, I had my feelings hurt, and then I realized I had other things that interested me. But had I been writing that book on my own, I might have just run with that. It interested me right now.

The value of writing between bright lines

[00:34:41] Pamela: I'm going to see what I can do with a really, really badass woman. Instead, I went a different direction. It's been interesting to me because it's trained me to work a little bit more between some pretty bright lines, whereas before, my lines were pretty dim and fuzzy and wherever I wanted them to be. And if I wanted to write a series of books that did terrible, which I've done before, then I can do that, and I can waste two years. So, yeah. It's never a waste, right? We always get better. Somebody loves those books. They become the body of work.

[00:35:17] Matty: And I don't think there's that much difference between an exercise, well, except for the time you're spending on it. There's not that much time between an exercise where you're saying, "I'm going to write a really great story in 150 words." That's a really interesting and intriguing exercise. Maybe I don't want to spend a year writing the 80,000-word version of that, but those guidelines can be restricting, but they can also be sort of empowering in the sense that it's focusing your attention in a way it otherwise wouldn't be focused.

[00:35:50] Pamela: Yeah. I agree with that. And at some point, you have to decide why you're writing. And what I mean by that is if you're writing for yourself, then you should write whatever you want all the time. If you're trying to sell your books, then you need some kind of idea of who you're writing to and what they like to read, and thus that creates some guideposts for you. It may be that you are unconscious of them, and you aim toward it just out of affinity with your readers, and that's fantastic, but they're still there. If you are writing towards it being a commercial venture as opposed to, "I'm doing this for me, and I don't care if it sells. I just love it. I live to write.”

I'm trying to make money. I mean, I'll be honest, because I gave up my day job. You know, I'm trying to make money. So, at first, it felt a little bit limiting, and then I embraced it because I embrace data. It's like, 'This is a learning experiment, and it either works out or it doesn't, but either way, I'm better for it,' you know, having gone down this road.

And that's really how I look at it. If it all ends tomorrow and I don't write another word for them, I'm a better author, an indie author, and businessperson in the world of publishing than I was before because I've been exposed to a new way to do it and have that to consider and potentially inculcate into what I do."

Matty: I actually could think of other questions, but that is such a nice wrap-up. I think that I'm going to go with that. Pamela, it is always so much fun to talk with you, and I appreciate so much you sharing the kind of behind-the-scenes inside scoop of what your experience has been making this transition. So please let the listeners and the viewers know where they can go to find all your books, regardless of who publishes them, online.

Pamela: All right, I can do that. PamelaFaganHutchins.com will point you in the right direction. My Bookouture books, the new series, Detective Delaney Pace, are only available in Kindle eBook form on Amazon, although the paperback and audio versions are available anywhere that you can order your books. Bookouture is a digital-only company. They do partner with print providers that stock bookstores and things like that, but anywhere online. My books are available everywhere online. We're not exclusive to Amazon with those anymore, so you can get them anywhere. And the best place to interact with me, and I encourage you to do it, talk books, whatever, talk publishing, dogs, is Facebook. I have a Facebook page and a Facebook group, and that's where I'm really most active.

Matty: You do have a super fun Facebook feed, so I'll just put another plug in for that.

Pamela: It's always nice to see Matty come up on there.

Matty: Well, Pamela, thank you so much. It's been so much fun to talk with you.

Pamela: You too. Thanks for having me.

Matty Dalrymple 4/2/24 Matty Dalrymple 4/2/24

Episode 232 - What Has Changed and Stayed the Same with Amazon Ads with Bryan Cohen

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Bryan Cohen discusses WHAT HAS CHANGED AND STAYED THE SAME WITH AMAZON ADS, including ads as a research tool; whether Amazon product pages are actually getting busier; the impact of A+ content; the advice to go deep rather than wide on ad platforms; how AI is (or might be) changing the ad game; budgeting for beginners; and whether one book is enough for an ad campaign.

Bryan Cohen is the CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. He's helped over 30,000 authors learn ads through his 5-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge. He also runs the Author Ad Agency, which helps full-time authors to scale up their self-publishing earnings. He lives in North Carolina with his wife, daughter, and cat.

Episode Links

https://learn.bestpageforward.net
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2230194167089012
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT_vHN_rKtRhtxs81s892vQ

Summary

This episode of The Indy Author Podcast features a conversation between the host, Matty Dalrymple, and guest Bryan Cohen, CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. They discuss various aspects of Amazon ads, providing insights and strategies for authors, particularly indie authors, in marketing their books.

Bryan Cohen has helped over 30,000 authors with advertising and emphasizes that Amazon ads can be an effective research tool to understand book positioning and market receptiveness. He notes that while the perception exists that Amazon ads have become more expensive, he's observed that costs can remain low, offering valuable data on how well a book is positioned in the market.

The conversation delves into the strategic use of Amazon ads, with Bryan pointing out that these ads can serve not only as a marketing tool but also as a means to gather insights on a book's reception and market fit. He suggests that even with just one book published, authors can benefit from Amazon ads to assess market response and refine their marketing and content strategies.

Bryan discusses the changes in Amazon ad placements, indicating an increase in ad spaces on product pages, which has made the pages busier. However, he advises that not all ad placements are equally effective and emphasizes the importance of strategic ad placement and understanding Amazon's advertising mechanisms.

A significant part of the discussion revolves around the use of A+ Content on Amazon and its impact on book sales. Bryan shares insights on how A+ Content can affect conversion rates and the importance of testing to see whether it enhances or detracts from sales performance.

The dialogue also touches on the broader marketing landscape for authors, comparing Amazon ads with other advertising platforms like Facebook and BookBub. Bryan suggests that while different platforms have their strengths, authors should focus on understanding and leveraging each platform's unique capabilities to maximize their advertising effectiveness.

Throughout the conversation, Bryan advocates for a balanced approach to marketing, where authors should not only focus on advertising but also on creating quality content and engaging with their audience. He emphasizes the importance of adapting strategies based on market feedback and continuously learning and refining advertising approaches.

In summary, the transcript covers a comprehensive discussion on the use of Amazon ads for indie authors, highlighting the importance of strategic advertising, market research, and the continual adaptation of marketing strategies to achieve success in book publishing. Bryan Cohen's insights provide valuable guidance for authors looking to navigate the complexities of online advertising and market positioning for their books.

Transcript

Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Bryan Cohen. Hey, Bryan, how are you doing?

Bryan: Hey Matty, I'm doing well. I'm happy to be here.

Meet Bryan Cohen

Matty: I am pleased to have you here. And just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Bryan Cohen is the CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. He has helped over 30,000 authors learn ads through his five-day Author Ad Profit Challenge. He also runs the Author Ad Agency, which helps full time authors to scale up their self-publishing earnings. And he lives in North Carolina with his wife, daughter, and cat. And I also wanted to send out a big congratulations to Bryan for passing 500 plus and 10 years of his great Sell More Books show podcast. So, Bryan, congratulations.

Bryan: Thank you, Matty. It's been a great, a great long time helping indie authors.

Matty: Yeah. Well, that is a very, very impressive track record. And the fact that you, you've done it so consistently and for such a long time and with such great information is, a great testament to you. So thank you for doing that.

Bryan: Of course. Of course.

Matty: So we are going to be talking today, not surprisingly, about Amazon ads, because obviously Bryan's the guy to go to for Amazon ads.

Strategic changes in Amazon ads

Matty: And so I wanted to start out by asking What have you seen change, if anything, at a strategic level with Amazon ads? Like, if someone had asked, are Amazon ads, any good, is the answer you would give about why different now than it would have been a year ago, five years ago, however far back you want to go?

Bryan: Sure. Yeah, no, I do think it's a little different than it would have been a few years ago. not for the reasons people might think. People might think, oh, well, Bryan's going to say it's more expensive, which Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's not necessarily more expensive from what I've seen. I've seen authors get hundreds of clicks at very low costs here in 2024.

Ads as a research tool

Bryan: So I know it's not necessarily that it costs more. I have seen that it can be a really good research tool to know how well your book has been positioned. which I wasn't always aware of, even, that when ads, we've heard the refrain, Amazon won't take my money, you try to run ads and it doesn't work.

We have found that sometimes it's not about Bidding too low, or it's not about, oh, this market is too expensive. I can't get, sometimes it's about your book's seven KDP keyword phrases and your book's three categories and your book's title. Sometimes little things like that actually will let Amazon spend your money or not spend your money.

And so, I used to think, and this is something I even see people still talking about today, when Amazon, when you have a book out on Amazon, you're not ready, you should wait until you have three books. And I've changed my tune on that, because I think Amazon ads can be really helpful, even just with your first book out, helping you to figure out, okay, Is Amazon taking my money?

If there's not, if they're not taking it, it's probable that something in the information you gave Amazon when you publish, Amazon isn't receiving it in the way you thought they would. And so I find that Amazon ads can still be one of the lower cost marketing methods. But it can also be a really good tool when you're starting out or when you're trying out a new series to see, okay, is Amazon figuring out what I'm sending it?

Is it picking up what I'm putting down? Whatever metaphor you want to use, that is one of the reasons I still recommend Amazon ads.

Matty: And is Amazon better at identifying those things than let's say, I don't know, book club ads or Facebook ads or something like that because there's such a strong tie between the data you're giving KDP and then the performance of an Amazon ad?

Bryan: I do think that Amazon can be in line and more so in line than maybe a BookBub ad or a, a Facebook ad. I think it can be. The problem is a lot of authors do have misalignment issues somewhere in the midst of the keywords. Subtitle categories, all of that stuff. And so I think the public perception of Amazon ads is that they are not as strong at connecting readers, as the other platforms, but it is interesting that when we have seen, and this is especially the case with a lot of our agency clients, they are already selling well, cause they're already full-time authors. It's easier to get those ads to spend even as low as 27 cents a click. We're getting those ads to spend when a newer author comes to, through our challenge or through ad school, and they say, I can't even get one click.is the platform broken? And then we look at this other account and we see a thousand clicks in a day.

We say, no, platform isn't broken, but there might be a disconnect here. Yeah. Yeah.

The desire for immediate social feedback

Matty: it is. It's a very different mindset. I have, experience, I've had some experience across all three platforms, but more on Facebook and BookBub. Those are the three I think of, like, when I'm thinking about advertising for my own books. Those are the three I think about, and I think one of the things that appeals to me about Facebook ads is you get this very immediate and personal response.

Feedback on why people are liking or not liking your ad, in some cases. So the example I can think of is that a couple of years ago, I was testing out a new tagline for my, Lizzie Ballard thrillers, and I, the tagline I had come up with was, what happens when an extraordinary power transforms an ordinary life?

And so, I thought that sounded pretty cool, so I started writing ads against it, and then someone made a response to the post, that made it clear that they thought it was going to be like a religious book, like an extraordinary power. They thought that was not true. We're talking this through non religiously affiliated power, but it was going to be, really does it.

Oh, well, that's really good to know because, that's something I could easily pull back from, whereas it's harder. My experience is it's harder to get that kind of sense of why, like you could see that your ads aren't spending, but is it the keyword? Is it the quality of the cover? Is it the quality of the content? Can you glean that kind of stuff from the Amazon ad results?

Bryan: I think that's a really good point, a really good observation, because you do get that social feedback on Facebook. You do get that social feedback on some, on a platform like TikTok, and you wouldn't get that feedback from, from Amazon. And so my answer to a certain extent has always been, well, take our free challenge and send us the links.

Cause we do it. eight weeks a year that we're around there for free, send us the link. We'll go take a look. we'll look at your keywords, but yeah, I mean, I think that if you have some money to spend and you want that immediate result, absolutely makes sense for Facebook or TikTok to get some feedback, but I think it really depends.

And this goes back to Authors having individualized ways that they take care of things based on their personality, based on the way they like doing things. Fortunately, I think they're, if people like the hand holding, they come to us. If they want to get immediate results and don't want to have to talk to a person for real and make it more on social media, go to Facebook, go to TikTok.

Either way, I do think it still comes back around to when you have a book that is selling. And maybe you found success with it on Facebook. We have found that success can be doubled when they're also running the ads on Amazon and not just confining it to one platform. I think that Amazon ads can be a primary driver of traffic to a book.

But they're a really good secondary driver when something else is working.

Are Amazon product pages actually getting busier?

Matty: One of the things that I feel like has changed over time on Amazon, and I'll ask you to confirm or deny, is that the pages seem busier and busier. So, if I'm shopping on Amazon and I go to a book and I start, looking for, I realize I've clicked into book two of the series and I want to go look for book one.

It becomes harder and harder to find that information because there's just so much there. Is that actually changing? And if it is, is that something that has made you adjust your strategy about Amazon ads?

Bryan: I learned some interesting things this past year. late last year, as part of my agency, I reached out to Amazon and found out some things. And it turned out that, and my team was helpful with this. Amazon has their AMG ads is what they used to call them. They're called something different now and the name escapes me, but as it often does, but there is the AMG ads were always known as, okay, if you've got 10,000 to burn, you can go to Amazon and say, Hey, I've got 10,000.

And they say, great, that's our minimum. You spend 10,000 with us a month, we'll run some special ads for you. I said, okay, well, I don't have these 10,000 to burn for my books, but, is there a way to do this without 10,000? And they said, well, we subcontract through some agencies to let you run ads that are very similar, which Amazon refers to as DSP or platform ads.

And it turns out that we've Could, if we hit 10,000 across lots of authors, we could actually run some of these ads for authors. And these ads are what has made the system feel busier. It used to be there were a couple places you'd see ads. The carousels on the product pages that you'd see that kind of have replaced also boughts in a lot of places.

And the search results. That became a little busier with sponsored brand ads starting to show up at the top of the search results. But then how does it feel busier? You go to an Amazon page, you see at the very top of the browser, there's now an ad. Underneath the buy button, there's an ad, and often underneath the product description, there's an ad.

Now sometimes regular old sponsored product ads can show up in these places, but more often than not, these are DSP ads or Amazon's own AMG ads. Now, interesting data from running these for six months. Most of them don't convert. The top of the page ads. Terrible. The ones that are even near under the button. Terrible.

The only ones we found that have been able to convert for us, and mileage may vary, is right under the product description, which makes sense. In the web terms, these are above the fold, so you don't have to scroll to get to them. Now, all of that being said, to answer your question, yes, the pages are busier, they're busier because of these other ad placements that Amazon is now selling in other ways.

Us normal folks, we can't usually get access to these kind of ads. But the good news is, those ads, for the most part, in our experimentation, aren't really that valuable. And so, it's the kind of thing where, even though sponsor product ads a little bit cheaper, a little bit more affordable for the regular author. We still find that these ads that all authors have access to actually do better and have better tracking somehow than these fancy pantsy ads that we've been able to peek under the hood and see. And so, I think that despite it being busier, there are still lots of really good opportunities there.

The impact of A+ Content

Matty: One of the things that I realize makes some pages look busier is the A plus content, so I know that for my Ann Kinnear books, there's a huge part of the page now taken up with one of those, like, triptych, sort of, I made them in Book Brush, you load an ad and then it breaks it up for you so you have, like, three parts of one image, which looks super cool, but I'm like, I wonder how long Amazon's going to keep doing that, cause that's, A huge amount of screen real estate for basically just a giant picture that I uploaded that was associated with my story.

Have you seen any pro or con impacts of A plus content on the success of people who are running Amazon X?

Bryan: Well, you brought up that Amazon, are they going to keep doing this? Amazon loves A plus content. Not sure why. I wonder if there's a search engine optimization something. They get more search traffic by having more images. That I don't know. But they love pushing it. I've been fortunate enough, Amazon has had me come on and teach some classes.

And at the end, they have these, Q& A sessions that aren't really live. They're just answering some questions in an Amazonian kind of way. And Amazon loves making sure that A plus content is delivered. mention. Maybe it's because it was a very requested feature and they're hoping that it makes readers happy, or authors happy. But, for a long time when A plus content was first announced, we did experiments on it. We looked, hey, does this improve a chance of a book being profitable or does it reduce the chances of a book being profitable? And because of all that real estate taken up, we actually found that because, and we think it's because it took so long to actually get to the reviews.

That it did reduce conversion. It did make the royalties, and, the profitability worse for those books. It's gotten a little better over time. places like Book Brush having tools so that the images don't look bad because part of the reason I think conversion was worse is because the images looked bad, but it's still a bit of a problem that it takes up all that real estate.

And so I'm a big fan of testing. Get 100 clicks without the A plus content, get 100 clicks with the A plus content, compare group 1 to group 2, and see, did you profit better, did you convert better, when you had the A plus content in place, or did not?

Matty: If someone does not have A plus content yet, do you recommend that they provide some in order to run that test? Or is it the kind of thing that you say, if you don't have it now, don't bother, but if you do have it, maybe test it without to see if it improves?

Bryan: If you don't have it now, don't bother, is what I would recommend.

Matty: Okay, this example just popped into my head. I recently got a screenshot of a friend's Kindle. He had opened up his Kindle. He had, purchased other of my books before, and it had an ad on the lock screen for one of my books.

Unpaid lock screen ads

Bryan: Inexplicably, it had an ad for one of my short stories, which I thought was weird.

Matty: But that was with me not thinking. Not having paid anything, I wasn't running any Amazon ads, do you know how often Amazon just puts an ad up? Like, I've got to believe that for that person's Kindle lock screen, there was a whole queue of other books that were maybe paying to have that placement.

Do you have any insight into how, those lock screen placements, are assigned?

Bryan: So you're not the first person I've heard who's had a book that they weren't running any ads for just randomly show up. I do think sometimes this is a function of kind of a pseudo also bought or books that you might like kind of carousel loaded in for when there aren't enough lock screen ads to actually go around.

but it is pretty rare. I don't think that it's something we can count on with any, reliability. I don't have deep, deep insight, like, one of my contacts at Amazon has told me specifically. It will show up 1 percent of the time, so I don't have anything specific to that. But anecdotally, it can happen sometimes, but as many know, and many have probably come on this show to say, we're in a pay to play environment.

More often than not, you are going to have to pay to get placement. That being said, I would not pay for the lock screen ads. They tend to be, a little bit pricier, and often it prices out authors who are trying to get a lower cost click on their ads.

Follow one course until success

Matty: So you had mentioned earlier the idea of Amazon being sort of a primary driver of sales and perhaps being supported by other ad platforms. for someone who's relatively new to the advertising, the book advertising game, are there combinations that you recommend or combinations that you recommend people stay away from?

Bryan: That's a good question. I think if you're new, sticking with one is probably going to be better, better to go deeper on one than to necessarily broaden out and try to learn multiple things at once, because it is like a four year degree, any of these things that you are going to be going deeper on in order to truly go as deep as you need to go, you know.

Go deep rather than wide

Bryan: You need to focus. the old, acronym, I heard John Lee Dumas say it once. I don't know if it's his. Follow one course until success. It is helpful to focus on one. Let's say, though, that you have learned one of them. And, there are various combinations. Let's say you've learned Facebook ads first. Amazon ads are helpful to set up. in addition, it will look like they are not doing anything because if Facebook ads are already sending traffic to your books, you may assume just, this is our natural psychological assumption. The thing I was already doing is the thing that's working. The new thing probably isn't. That isn't always true in what we've found, but I will say that if you are running Facebook ads already and then you start Amazon ads, I would run the Amazon ads for at least three to six months. I would not make any quick assumptions on whether or not those are working. Let's say you've already run BookBub ads.

and you're trying to run Amazon ads. These can work really well together. BookBub ads spend a lot faster. And so, you are going to want to keep an eye on your budget. I don't necessarily have any huge concerns, oh, that I, that are different than the Facebook and Amazon combo. Similarly, give the ads three to six months.

If you've run Amazon ads, or you know Amazon ads, and then you're adding another one, I would probably add Facebook next, but take it slow. No need to add big budgets. There are some really good courses out there. I'm a big fan of, Matthew Holmes's, work on Facebook ads. He's got a great free book out there, that can help you start.

I've learned from other great people, like Mal Cooper, like James Blatch and company. Like, there, there's a lot of good stuff out there. But when there are different schools of thought on the same platform, sometimes it makes sense to take this idea, and this idea and combine them together, but a lot of the time it doesn't.

And so just be careful when you're saying, well, I tried to take Matt's idea. I tried to take James's idea and mash them together because it felt right to me. But feeling is not fact. You need to consider going deep on one of the methods. For that specific platform first, then you can consider adding some bells and whistles to it, but I would not, go to the buffet and add different parts, to, to one particular learning style because it is possible they will not go together well.

Relying on the algorithms

Matty: Well, the mention of, Matt Holmes is interesting. I'm going to glom together two questions here. So I took the Matt Holmes, course on untargeted Facebook ads, where you allow Facebook to determine, you don't provide these, this, people who like Stephen King are going to like this.

You let Facebook do that. And it totally made sense to me. And I tried that for a while. It wasn't really panning out for me. I'm not necessarily blaming the theory. It's there are a lot of moving parts. So. I know it's working well for some people, but one of the things that appeal to me about it is that it makes sense to me that if, if AI is writing novels, if AI can do the things that it can do, then Facebook algorithms as a form of AI, like I trust that they could be better at picking targets for me than I could be.

And that the platforms that rely on me doing research into my own books, like Better Understanding Comp Authors, I'm kind of looking forward to the day when I can press a button and, Chad GPT will say, as it does now, I'm not sure how accurate it is, but, oh, you know who good comp authors are for your books?

These. And I think Amazon is. is perfectly positioned to do this because they, like, they have the text of your book. I feel like it can't be that far away that they're going to be doing the equivalent of untargeted Facebook ads. That was a whole mess of stuff, but can you comment on, like, the pros and cons of you making the decisions about who will like your books versus a machine making decisions about who's going to like your books?

Bryan: Well, it's very interesting because, we have found that especially for some of our authors who are making over 6,000 a month, so they qualify, for our agency, they, they find that they're getting the most clicks on their auto ads, which is, Somewhat just generated by Amazon, based around your 7 KDP keyword phrases, based around your categories, based around previous maybe data that you have going to your book.

And so it is kind of similar in that way, nowhere near as detailed or sophisticated as Facebook's Advantage Plus, audiences, and I have heard of them working for some people, not working for others, but yet you got to try it because if it does work, there's your push button, there's your chat GPT, pick all the things that, if you can get it to work with less Input from you and less effort from you, and it works.

You got to do it because there is only so much time in the day, right? There's only so many hours. There's only so much energy. There's only so much passion that can go into a single day. And if we can figure out that, oh, this Facebook method saves time, saves energy, great. Amazon doesn't feel like it's quite there yet.

I would love for it to be there. I would love for it to be a little bit easier. I feel like, sometimes teaching Amazon ads, we're bending over backwards, trying to explain the little, quirks of the platform. It'd be nice if those quirks weren't there and it just kind of worked. but I do think in a few years, Matty, we will be in a position that it will be easier for everyone to be able to advertise, but that will mean some of the people that here in 2024 who currently have an advantage, over, over authors who maybe are struggling with those ads, that advantage may dissipate.

And, you know as well as I do, when, authors who are secure in their earnings start to see that gap, dissipating, they're going to be angry, and they're going to say, this is no good, and they're going to say mean things about that platform, or the machines, or how it works, and it's like, Well, this is why you build up an email list.

This is why you try to future proof your business. This is why you, you become anti fragile in whatever ways you can. This is why you connect deeper with your readers, while you have that advantage because these kinds of advantages could be temporary. And so it's good to build a stronger foundation for your business.

Matty: Yeah, I can imagine that the improvement of AI is not only going to be potentially a time saver for authors, but also remove, provides a more objective source. So for example, I could see someone writing a book and they say, this is definitely a police procedural. I'm going to, I'm going to put in a lot of police procedural related terms into my keywords.

And then, they put it up, it doesn't do anything, but behind the scenes, if you let a machine. Picket, they would say, oh, no, this is really more cozy. And they start showing it to cozy readers. And then suddenly the sales boom. And I just think that a lot of these is, ad approaches require the person who's probably the least good at objectively assessing the work to assign this stuff that is supposed to be objective, like keywords. It provides that third party perspective in a way that I think it can be very difficult for authors to bring to their own work.

Bryan: Yeah, you need, whether it is a person or a program, getting some neutral point of view on your books can make a huge difference. I absolutely agree.

Matty: Yeah, an experience I had was taking my, The description of one of my books and putting it into mid journey or something like that, and saying, give me a cover, not because I was planning on using the cover, but I was just curious, and it featured a secondary character much more prominently on the cover, and I thought, oh yeah, because you know what, that character's name shows up Before my protagonist's character in the description, maybe it would be a good idea if I didn't do that, actually put my protagonist's name first. So, those kinds of insights, I think it's useful to play around with this stuff, even if you don't end up using it in the real world, just to see. Oh yeah, I never thought of it that way before.

Bryan: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Good exercise that you did there for yourself.

Attributing performance results to advertising efforts

Matty: I think one of the challenges of using multiple platforms is this question of to where do you attribute the results? And so for a lot of my author career, I've only been doing one thing at a time. So if I get a big jump in sales, I'm like, okay, well, I was running Amazon ads. It's probably from Amazon ads.

Is there any, again, sort of strategic advice you can give when people are running ads on multiple platforms or making multiple promotional efforts, how they know where those came from?

Bryan: When you get really complicated when you're like some of the clients that we work with who are running Facebook ads, Amazon ads, they have a vibrant TikTok following. They're doing maybe TikTok shop or they're also doing Shopify, and some of the people who don't buy on Shopify will then go over to Amazon and buy This makes it.

Like, if you think back to high school calculus, this is a multi-variable equation. And so you want to look at potential cause and effect. Any assumptions you have to throw out the window, because if you see that, hey, I got more Facebook clicks this day, it must've been that. But then you dive deeper, and you see that, oh, well, there's a chance that Facebook, that Facebook traffic was actually going to a bad, irrelevant source that day.

And so you say, well, maybe it wasn't the Facebook. It is very, very difficult. And so, what you have to really look at You have to look at the data very objectively. You cannot go into it with a bunch of assumptions. I have had authors say, well, I know that these five sales didn't come from my ads because my uncle said he told his friends about it, and they must have bought it.

And it's like, well, you don't know anything when it comes to this because Amazon is not going to share that data with us. And so you really have to come at it very much from as much of a neutral perspective. We were just talking about a neutral perspective. As much as, as neutral as you possibly can be, because once you, when you throw in Amazon plus Facebook, okay, it gets a little more complicated.

If you have 3 or 4 promotional methods going at once, it is very difficult to tell where the sales actually came from. I would, for the most part, not recommend 3 to 4 promotional methods, unless you're already doing pretty well, because it, there comes a certain point in your career, and we've seen this with some of our agency clients, they’re making 20 grand on a bad month.

And so they know, well, if I spend five to 10 grand across these platforms and make 30 grand, it doesn't really matter where they came from to a certain extent. They're just happy that they threw money at ads and good things happen. They had a good profit margin and they're going to do it again. And there might come a time where they have to kind of reckon with that.

but in the short term, if they know I'll spend 10, I'll make 20 30 or 40, then they can go ahead and do that. But for folks who are starting out, you might want to keep things more simple.

Budgeting for ad beginners

Matty: I think that brings up another thing that I always like to encourage, people who are experts as you are to talk to is if someone is just starting out, I think we hear these, I spent 10,000 a month on Amazon ads and I earn, 10,000 times whatever. When people are just dipping their toe in the water.

What should they be budgeting, as a daily budget, as a weekly budget, however they, you would recommend they approach it, when they're just starting out.

Bryan: Yeah, absolutely. With Amazon ads, we usually put a 5 daily budget per ad. but then if you're worried that those ads are going to spend. All that money. If you have five ads, you have 10 ads, and you don't want to spend 25 to 50 a day, which they usually won't if you bid pretty low, around 34 to 39. But let's say you're nervous about it.

You can actually put all those ads into an ad folder that's called a portfolio, and you can set a portfolio budget cap and say, Actually, I don't want this to spend more than 40 for the month. And you say on a recurring basis, each month I want to spend 40 or less. I would say that. When you're first starting out, you could set those portfolio budgets, 40 to 50 in a month.

when you're just starting out, when you just have one book, it's not even likely to spend all that. but it's nice to know that budget is in place. I think a lot of authors, when they come into this, they say, well, I've got 400 earmarked. I'm going to spend this on ads. Then you go to Amazon, and it spends 4.

And you're like, but I budgeted 400. Why didn't it spend it? I'm going to raise my bid, which is not what we would recommend. And so you might want to budget for a certain amount, but you just got to keep in mind with a platform like Amazon, it might not actually go and spend that money, but, it’s good to know those numbers so that you could put them in as a portfolio budget cap.

Is one book enough for an ad campaign?

Matty: So I wanted to ask a time investment question. you would mention before about, we all have lives, and so how much time do we invest in this kind of thing? So I think that a piece of common author advice is, if you're wondering what to do with your time, you never go wrong using it to work on your next book.

And I think that's generally true, although I'm kind of hearing a shift, because I think if I had heard you speak as I have years ago, then the message would have been, if you only have one book, maybe wait until you have another book. Now I think I'm hearing more of a shift to, there's no harm in running ads against an early book, because it can advise, it can give you that market research insight.

That suggest, maybe this is really cozy and not a police procedural, or maybe people aren't sympathizing with your character, whatever that might be. But, I think there's also a point where you've got a bunch of books, like, I have, I currently have, 10 novels by the end of this year, I should have 11 or 12, and I almost feel like, maybe it's better, like, maybe I should make 2025 my promotional year, not stop writing altogether, because I think there are dangers there, but do you ever think that there's a time when you would advise an author to say, now it's time to shift your, Let's shift your focus a little bit.

Let's have a concerted chunk of time that is strictly going to be focused on learning and optimizing and using promotional tools like Amazon ads.

Bryan: I think folks do this naturally. I think that people do kind of go into promotional mode, especially if they buy a course or they are trying out a new method. I think there can be benefits of it, but right now, and I got a little bit in trouble for this, this was exciting. So I was talking about on some more book show that this exact question, if you have, one book out, or how many books would you wait until you run ads?

And I say one, because if you are planning to write a ten book series, and first book has no chance of selling once you've run the ads, and you realize, like, maybe you didn't quite get the genre right, maybe you didn't get the tropes right, then, hey, the ads have actually pointed you in the direction of, well, maybe you could write something a little bit different and see how that goes.

I got in trouble for it a little bit, because someone listened to that post, or listened to that, episode, and said, Bryan is telling me that I should cancel my series if it didn't sell well on ads. And then that was posted in a public group, the writing gals, and a lot of people were like, That's terrible advice!

And it's not exactly what I was saying, but it's not exactly the opposite of what I was saying either, because What are you going to get more out of? Are you going to get more out of writing and researching a series starter, running ads to it, determining, eh, it's not where it needs to be, and then writing and researching a second series starter.

And then maybe taking the lessons learned from that and writing a third series starter for a totally different series, maybe even a different subgenre. Or writing three books in one series and then running ads to it. do you get more out of? I wonder if you get more out of option A, because that writing and research process that usually we don't do until we've finished a series, put it on the shelf, moved on to another series, is where the growth can happen to a certain extent.

I remember I was writing a series, and I was writing book 5, and I was like, this is the best book I've ever written, and no one's ever going to find it. Because it's deep in a series that the book one isn't so good. And so to go back to the question of, is there a time where you focus on promotional methods or you, or do you always just keep the writing going? a big fan right now of you focus some time on the writing and research and. You can focus some time on promotion, but I think the big growths, the Richter scale, 10x growths, those happen jumping from a series to a different series to a different series. Now, I did message the person and all these comments come in and I said, you don't have to quit a series.

You don't have to give up a series. But there is nothing wrong with saying, I'm going to write another book one and I'll come back to book two of this later. You never have to kill a series, but I am very big right now, Matty, on can I save an author two to three years of their lives? And this is kind of the theory I'm going on of, especially based on lots of authors I've seen who've had success.

This might be the thing to concentrate on. And you might want to wait until you have the big hit where one of those series starters does seem to take off on its own. maybe you go into promotion mode, not necessarily when, you're in a position where you'd need to double your sales to be happy. To me, that feels like, well, ads are going to bump what you have up 20 to 30 percent at most. If. If you're not happy with what 20 30 percent more would bring, then I wonder if you focus on that next series starter and go deeper into that writing to market genre research and then save the promotional time for later.

Theoretical? I'll put that, forward, philosophical maybe, but I'm always trying to think of how can authors kind of level up, and this feels to me like maybe the direction they need to go in.

Matty: Well, I like that idea that you're not suggesting people trash their starter if it's not doing well on the ads, but that by the time you've tested your third starter, and this is the one that catches on, then it's easier to step back and say, oh, you know what I did differently?

I spent more time developing the character, and you know what I could do? I could go back into series one, and I could write that second book, except this time, guess what? more character development, or an interesting backstory, or whatever that might be. And so, the learnings that you can gain from what it was about that one that finally hit could be profitably applied to the earlier ones.

Bryan: right. that's, like I said, the theory, but I've seen too many authors. All of those have success with their 3rd series or their 4th series or their 5th series. And I wonder, well, what if that didn't happen in year 6 of their career? What if it happened in year 2? And it just makes me wonder.

Matty: So, Bryan, I appreciate you being willing to delve into all these sort of philosophical and theoretical questions about, Amazon ads, and I know you have lots of resources for the more tactical side of Amazon ads as well, so, please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about those resources and everything you do online,

Bryan: Absolutely. And thank you, Matty. It's been a lot of fun talking with you today. So, the 5 Day Author Ad Profit Challenge is a free event that we do quarterly. The next one's coming up April 17th, 2024. We'll have more in the future each quarter. this is a free course, free support, free Q&As. Often copied and duplicated. People try to do these kinds of challenges, but, I feel like we've really gotten a good handle on our process here, and that's why this one coming up is the 19th challenge we've done, and usually several thousand people are taking it at once, we love putting this on, it's a good way to learn the basics, it's a good way to.

Matty: Get your hands dirty and actually make a few ads, but do, to do it in a safe environment where you have a lot of support, where you're not doing it all on your own. That is at AuthorsAdvertise.com. That's AuthorsAdvertise.com and you can register for the challenge. as I have done myself.

Bryan: As you have done yourself,

Matty: That's right.

Bryan: I'm so excited that you'll be there.

and then I have a podcast too, the Sell More Book Show podcast, sellmorebookshow.com or anywhere you listen to podcasts. as Matty mentioned, we just hit 10 years, hoping to do as many more as we can.

Matty: Great. It was lovely talking to you, Bryan. Thanks so much.

Matty Dalrymple 3/26/24 Matty Dalrymple 3/26/24

Episode 231 - Aim Lower - The Secret to Hitting Big Goals Is Targets So Easy You Can't Miss Them with Roland Denzel

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Roland Denzel discusses AIM LOWER - THE SECRET TO HITTING BIG GOALS IS TARGETS SO EASY YOU CAN'T MISS THEM, including how big goals teach bad habits, how tiny dopamine hits mean the world to your habits, how habits need slack and an expiration date, and his advice: One at a time, please.

Roland Denzel created The Indestructible Author in 2015 to help authors just like him be more productive and write more books, all while staying healthy, happy, and sane. You might know Roland as the author of numerous health, fitness, and nutrition books, a health coach, and a restorative exercise specialist, but the truth is Roland has always been an author first. He has written over ten books, dozens of short stories, hundreds of blog posts and articles, and at least one poem, all while raising a family and working a sixty-hour a week day job.

Episode Links

Roland's Links:
https://indestructibleauthor.com
instagram.com/indestructibleauthor/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/IndestructibleAuthorGroup/
https://www.youtube.com/@rolanddenzel-authorcoach

Roland's Previous Podcast Appearance:
Episode 155 - The Benefits (and Costs) of Membership with Roland Denzel

Summary

The main topic discussed was Roland Denzel's philosophy of setting small, achievable goals to build positive writing habits, rather than aiming for overly ambitious targets that can lead to failure and burnout.

Denzel argued that big writing challenges like NaNoWriMo teach bad habits by requiring unsustainable word counts and grueling writing schedules. This can make writing feel miserable and result in associating it with negative emotions. Instead of 50,000 words in a month, he advocated for much smaller daily goals, like writing for just 1 hour per day 5 days a week. The key is making the targets so easy that you simply cannot fail to meet them.

This provides frequent small "dopamine hits" and rewards for accomplishing achievable tasks, reinforcing the habit in a positive way. Denzel emphasized the power of things like checking off to-do items, calendar markings, or little celebrations to provide psychological satisfaction. He also stressed giving yourself "slack" - permission to be imperfect and making goals flexible enough to account for disruptions.

Trying to stack too many new habits at once is a recipe for failure according to Denzel. He recommended introducing just one new positive habit at a time, mastering it through repetition until it feels easy, and then layering in the next habit. This helps avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Habits should also have defined expiration dates, like a 7 or 10 day "test run", to evaluate if they are truly serving you well before committing long-term. If not, you can adjust or scrap the habit without it feeling like a failure.

The ultimate aim is to find an enjoyable, sustainable process for writing and accomplishing goals, rather than resorting to white-knuckle grit and ultimately burning out. Tiny successes and dopamine hits build positive momentum over time.

Denzel's own experiences illustrated these principles. He built a writing career around the constraints of a day job and family by carving out 30-60 minute sessions whenever possible rather than trying to force long dedicated blocks. The key was shaping his process around his life, not the other way around.

In summary, Denzel advocated setting tiny, easy-to-achieve goals that provide frequent positive reinforcement as the secrets to building productive, sustainable writing habits over the long-term. His overarching philosophy centered on an enjoyable, low-stress approach to slowly layering in success after success.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to "The Indy Author Podcast." Today, my guest is Roland Denzel. Hey, Roland, how are you doing?

[00:00:06] Roland: Hey, good morning, Matty. I'm doing great.

[00:00:08] Matty: That's great to hear.

Meet Roland Denzel

[00:00:09] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Roland Denzel created "The Indestructible Author" in 2015 to help authors just like him be more productive and write more books, all while staying healthy, happy, and sane.

You might know Roland as the author of numerous health, fitness, and nutrition books, a health coach, and a restorative exercise specialist. But the truth is, Roland has always been an author for us. He has written over 10 books, dozens of short stories, hundreds of blog posts and articles, and at least one poem, all while raising a family and working a 60-hour-a-week day job.

And Roland previously joined me in Episode 155, which was "The Benefits and Costs of Membership."

The Power of Aiming Lower

[00:00:42] Matty: This was a while ago. I can't remember the context where this came up, but I heard Roland talking about something and invited him on the podcast to recap it. This is great because normally now I'm playing with ChatGPT to come up with an intriguing title, and you did this for me.

So the title of what we're going to be talking about is "Aim Lower: The Secret to Hitting Big Goals Is Targets So Easy You Can't Miss Them." Roland even gave me a little teaser for what we're going to be talking about. Whether it's writing a book in a month or setting the same resolutions year after year, the big goals we set for ourselves often come with unsustainable habits.

But what if the secret to reaching your big goals is to build habits so small you simply can't fail? I just love this. Roland was also kind enough to send me some bullet points for what he wanted to cover with this topic. He did all the work for me; this is so great.

Big Goals Teach Bad Habits

[00:01:30] Matty: The first one we want to talk about is big goals teach bad habits.

Talk a little bit about that.

[00:01:38] Roland: As an author, we've probably all tried to do NaNoWriMo, for instance, National Novel Writing Month, and you get all mentally prepared for it. You say, "I'm going to get up in the morning, or work at lunch, or all of the above," and you aim to write 1,666 words per day. It's 30 days, so you just knuckle through, and you get it done.

What happens is it's such a challenge. There are good things about challenges like this; it can prove to you that you can do it, but the downside is that it doesn't teach you any good habits. In fact, it probably teaches you some bad habits because if you have to knuckle through something, that's not sustainable.

If you have to force yourself to do all these things, and then you're dreading it or regretting it, then at the end of that month, it's very unlikely you will continue the same way. You're going to tone it down or you're going to change your process. So many people crash at the end of National Novel Writing Month and take the next month or two or three off, and they don't look at that book again or any book for a long period of time.

So what did that teach you? It taught you that you can do something hard. You can physically do something hard, but it also taught you that writing is hard and it's miserable on a subconscious level because we have to give our subconscious minds a lot of credit for doing things to help us and also to hurt us.

Our subconscious is there to protect us, and it's not always the protection we want.

[00:03:16] Matty: Yeah. I have never done NaNoWriMo, nor have I ever used word count as a measure of my writing because my fear is that if I had to write 1,666 words a day, I would get to 1,500 and then just write 166 words of nonsense, because I would feel like I had to. It's like when the assembly line starts moving too fast and you're just slapping the pieces on because the goal becomes more important than the quality.

[00:03:49] Roland: Exactly. Is that a bad habit? Yes, it's like, do you want to write words just for the sake of words? What's the point of that, right? You're just going to have to delete those words the next time or when you're editing you'll be like, "What was I thinking here? This is nonsense." So that's definitely a big part of it. There's also the thing where, let's say, you take a day off and there are all these fancy spreadsheets that people use for National Novel Writing Month. So you get to a certain point, and it's Thanksgiving. You're traveling that day, dealing with family, and traveling back. No writing that day, which should be fine, right? But the spreadsheet auto-adjusts. So now, the next day, you have to write, say, 1,754 words, and it feels overwhelming.

If you're sick, or there's an emergency, or your laptop crashes, and it takes a while to get it back, then the next day, you're up to 1,900 words. Pretty soon, all of this pressure mounts because you have a goal of meeting this arbitrary 50,000 words in a month, right? Hopefully, you finish it because then you'll get a dopamine hit knowing you can do something hard when it comes to writing. But if you fail, you get the opposite effect. You've told your conscious and subconscious mind that you've failed before.

So next November, or the next time you decide to write a lot in a month, even if you consciously think you can do it, subconsciously, there's a part of you that's reminding you it didn't work out last time. Last time it was really hard, wasn't it? You felt your body tense up so many times. Is it really worth it? Then you either decide it's worth it and make it harder on yourself, thinking, "I'll be more strict this time, so I know I'll succeed." Which, if you fail, it's even worse. You're really piling it on yourself. Or you think the solution is to work harder, which isn't true. What you need is a sustainable, enjoyable way to write, one that continuously gives you little rewards, little successes. You want those kinds of positive outcomes to build habits and to tell yourself you're on the right track.

[00:06:52] Matty: Yeah, if I were in charge of the world, the two changes I would make to NaNoWriMo are not to do it in November because the only worse month they could have picked would be December. Why not do it in January when nothing else is going on? And the other thing is, I think it would be cool to aim for thirty 1,500-word short stories because then at least at the end of the month, you could say, "Well, I didn't get thirty 1,500-word short stories, but I got fifteen 1,500-word short stories." You have an actual finished thing. Even if your schedule totally goes out the window, you might have three substantial stories, and at least you can say, "Look, I finished these three things," not, "I didn't finish this one ginormous thing."

[00:07:43] Roland: But for people new to short stories, it could take hours of mental thought and energy to come up with the idea for a short story, right? So now, if you have to do that every day, you might be even more exhausted by the end of the thirty days. Some people might do better, but some could be like, "Oh, I could never write a short story," and that could just ruin them.

Goals Should Be So Small You Can't Fail

[00:08:08] Roland: So, the next bullet I gave you is that goals should be so small you can't fail, fail-proof, right? Think of a goal that you want to do, like writing short stories. Your goal should not be to write thirty short stories. That's like a long-term goal and it's very arbitrary, just like 50,000 words. Your goal is to write a novel, right? Great. So put that off in the distance. Then you say, "What are the things I need to do? What are the habits or what are the systems I need to put in place to write a novel or to write these short stories?" Then drill them down to the very smallest elements.

These are the things you can set your daily little goals or your daily little systems in place for, but they need to be easy. Let's take National Novel Writing Month. We'll pretend it doesn't exist, but someone says, "I want to write a novel," which is the same goal as NaNoWriMo.

So I want to write a novel. So you can say, "Well, I need to write more. I need to write regularly. I need to keep my story moving." So what can I do that I think is sustainable, that I can absolutely accomplish every day or most days, and that I will feel good about once I'm doing it?

For me, I would say, back before I did NaNoWriMo, I generally have about an hour a day where I can spend some time writing. It's broken up throughout the day. So I would say, "You know what, I think I can write for an hour a day."

Then think about how likely you are to accomplish that on a scale from 1 to 10. If it's a 6, that's a 60 percent chance. No, that's not very good. It's too hard. The goal needs to be smaller. Think of an even smaller goal that you know you can achieve. So say, "Can I do an hour total throughout the day?" Okay, that's better. Instead of an hour in the morning, I can spread my hour throughout the day. Maybe that's a 70 or 80 percent chance, 7 or 8 out of 10. Then ask, "Does it have to be every day?"

[00:12:34] Matty: Well, no, but it has to be maybe five days a week. Six days a week is too hard. So it's only like a seven. Five days a week, an hour a day of writing, and I'm going to qualify writing as sitting in front of my computer and doing nothing else but putting words on my digital page.

I think that's a nine. I think that's pretty achievable. A nine or ten. Because I can find a way to get that, you know, five days a week. That's the kind of goal you need to have, right? And for short stories, if you're really good at them, you might think, okay, I want to work on a short story every day.

It doesn't have to be the same short story because especially at the beginning, if you haven't written one, it could take a lot of not just time thinking. Whenever you're learning something new, it not only takes mental energy but also what I call emotional energy. Because if something frustrates you, it's not just a matter of, "Oh, it's frustrating and my CPU is spinning." It's frustrating, and I feel it viscerally in my body. Like, "This is so frustrating." And then these subconscious things, "I can do it, I can't do it," all these things come up. It's like emotional energy. And for authors, especially, that can be so draining that they burn themselves out very quickly.

So you might want to think, "I'm going to work on my short story for an hour a day." And then list off or make the tiny little things that make up creating a short story—coming up with an idea, a character, a setting, sitting in front of my computer and typing, outlining—it doesn't really matter what it is, as long as you, in your agreement with yourself, know that those are the little things required to meet your goal.

Tiny Dopamine Hits Mean the World to Your Habits

[00:12:54] Roland: Exactly. So, you probably know who Jerry Seinfeld is, the comedian. He had a challenge for himself to write a joke a day. It didn't have to be a good joke, a long joke, or a great joke. Just a joke. He had to spend time writing a joke per day. Sometimes it's five minutes, sometimes it's an hour. But when he got it done, he would just put an X on his calendar. It doesn't sound like much, but an X on your calendar creates a dopamine hit. Just like if you have a to-do list and you check it off, it feels good. You should always put things on your to-do list that you know you can do. It gets you started, right? And then as your list goes up, you feel those dopamine hits every day. Those are positive reinforcements that you're doing the right things with your habits. And the reverse is true.

If you can't meet those things, if you can't get that little hit, you don't get that dopamine hit, then you have a slump that day. So that's why it's important to find something that you know you can do, that you feel very confident that you can achieve. And there's a little bit more to that.

[00:15:13] Matty: There are more protective measures we can put in place that will mitigate the effects of missing a day, like I talked about before, maybe five days out of seven, not necessarily every day per week. That's one way. That's common.

These tiny little dopamine hits can be like a check on the calendar or like when little kids use happy face stickers, right? You could make your own to-do list, you could make your own chart. Like Austin Kleon—I don't know if you know who Austin Kleon is—he writes books like "Steal Like an Artist," "Show Your Work," right?

He has a thing on his website with a form you can print off, and it's like a 31-day calendar, right? It's just a fun calendar in his special handwriting, and he says do whatever you want. Type at the top, write at the top, and put like a sticker, draw something.

It just gives you something that gives you that little feeling, that little hit that feels good every day. They're super tiny, but don't underestimate how powerful something small can be.

[00:15:13] Matty: In your experience, is there a difference between making those kinds of checkoffs physically on a document versus in an online task management thing or a spreadsheet or something like that?

[00:15:25] Roland: There probably is. For a while, I used a to-do app, and all of my apps on my phone have the sounds turned off.

So when I click a to-do, nothing happens. It doesn't vibrate, it doesn't do anything, right? So there's something to be said for that ding, for that noise, right? So you have to find what works for you. Does it feel satisfying? Like, does your to-do list make a flash, or does it make a ding, or does it vibrate in your hand?

Does it send you a message or a notification that feels good? Because that's another thing, like, I think it's Microsoft To Do, every time you check it off, it'll send you an email, or something at the end of the day saying you've done something. So that could be enough to get that email. So, unless you're sure that the digital works for you and makes you feel good when you click it, find something here in the real world, tangible, like those little silver bells that hotels and restaurants used to have, right? Ding, ding, ding, right? Get one of those and keep it on your desk or next to your door, so like when you see it and you get there like, "Oh, I did that today," ding, and hit it.

But it's something, so that's why, I mean, other things like that, stickers are inexpensive. You can have a calendar, like I have a big whiteboard calendar over here, and just checking it off with a different color pen is really nice.

[00:16:54] Matty: I realized that the task management software I use is Trello, and in Trello, if you can put a checklist attached to an item, and so I have one, like my daily tasks, the things that I do every day, check scribe count and check my promotion calendar and things like that. And I've added an automation so that on my daily calendar, once I've checked everything off, first of all, if you check everything off, when you check off the last thing, all the little checkboxes vibrate in a happy way.

[00:17:24] Roland: Oh, that's good.

[00:17:25] Matty: And then it clears out all the checkmarks and it moves the task to the next day. So it is sort of like what you're saying about the stickers. It is oddly satisfying to have a little happy dance from the checkboxes.

[00:17:37] Roland: Isn't it? Yeah.

[00:17:41] Roland: Yes, other things you can do is, if you have... this doesn't really work if you're not very active on social media because you can post things on social media. For example, "Hey, I achieved my goal for the day." It might be super annoying to your Facebook friends if you post every day that you achieved your goal, but if you have, maybe, one thing like, "Here's my goal for the week," and every day you update that post to say you've done it that day, that could be different. You have to see if that is satisfying for you, and if you have enough friends or followers who are engaged, you're going to get responses, people saying "good job," and things like that. So that could be another way to do it.

Habits Need Slack

[00:18:22] Matty: I want to move on to the next bullet, which is "Habits need slack."

[00:18:26] Roland: Yes. So, I learned that not everyone knows what the term "slack" means. You have to have slack, which is just like relaxing. It's like you give yourself a break. That's why I think it's funny. But habits need slack too. I already talked about one type of slack, but I didn't use the term at the time. It's like, instead of committing to seven days per week, I'll aim for five days a week. That's one way of building slack into the habit you're trying to form because it's unsustainable to do something seven days a week forever. Something can happen. So, you either have to make the task easier, or you have to cut yourself some slack and say, "Hey, I'm not going to be super strict with myself."

The key here, with all of these things, is you have to give yourself slack, make the goals small, and define the rewards before you start building the new habit. You have to set these rules before you begin, because if you adjust them later, even for a good reason, I guarantee somewhere deep down, in your soul and in your bones, you'll feel the tiniest bit like a failure. For example, "Oh, I've gone 12 days and I realize that I can't do this seven days a week, so I'm going to do five days a week." That's good, it's good that you're flexible, but having set that expectation ahead of time would have been much more positive. Because now you're not changing the rules. When you change the rules, you subconsciously feel a bit like a failure, and that's what you want to avoid. You want to continue moving forward with positives and not have to take a step back with negatives. So, cutting yourself some slack is crucial.

[00:21:38] Matty: That feels more comfortable to me based on my writing style.

[00:21:41] Roland: Yes, so that's a different kind of slack. Slack can be anything, but it essentially goes with giving yourself permission to not be perfect. The key is to ensure that you grant yourself this permission ahead of time.

[00:21:57] Matty: I like the idea of setting goals ahead of time, not only because it sets you up to feel good when you achieve them, but also because it's a method of triaging what you think you want to accomplish. You might be considering participating in NaNoWriMo, and as you plan out how you'll manage your time and allocate your attention, you may conclude that there's only a 20 percent likelihood of following through. Deciding whether you truly want to commit to NaNoWriMo ahead of time allows you to thoroughly consider your decision. However, I did have a question about slack. There's the slack of, "I intended to write for an hour a day, but I'm just not feeling it," or "I was going to write for an hour today, but my car broke down and I'm dealing with that." These are instances where you need to accept that writing seven days a week isn't feasible, and aiming for five days a week is much more realistic.

Then there are times when you're ill and can't write at all for a week. Do you manage these kinds of emergency situations differently?

[00:23:04] Roland: That's a great point because there are definitely unexpected events that can disrupt your routine. The good news, if it's significant—like your car breaking down or falling ill, as I did with COVID a couple of weeks ago, which prevented me from writing for a few days—is that you know you had a valid reason for missing those days. It's also beneficial to remind yourself that if something drastic occurs, it's understandable, and it's not a point of failure. There are simply times when you cannot do what you planned.

[00:25:28] Matty: I think another way to handle those catastrophic moments is to set such small goals that you can't fail. Habits need slack because, let's say, you start feeling unwell on a Monday and you think, "Okay, this is a catastrophic moment for my writing goals. I'm going to feel terrible today, I'll try to get back to it tomorrow." Then, if the next day you still feel bad, you might think, "Today is another catastrophic day. I'll get back to it tomorrow." However, if you realize you're getting sick and you know it will last a week, you could say, "I'm going to take a week off because I know that's how long it takes." And then, if you get back to it on day five, you feel good about returning to your habit sooner. The key is not to plan too aggressively after a setback, which could further a sense of failure.

[00:26:24] Roland: This is one of the barriers. That's a great point, but it also reminds me of the issue where we tend to start things on New Year's Day, the first of the month, Mondays, or our birthdays. These are real days on the calendar, and I understand why we choose them, but they're quite arbitrary in the grand scheme of things, even saying "I'm going to do this for the month of November." It's also arbitrary. So you could say, "I'm going to do it for 30 days," and if you need a sabbatical, you pick up where you left off after you're well. Right? So, do you feel like you have to start over a little? You can either start over again or pick up where you left off, depending on what's better for you. If you were already in the groove, give yourself some slack and say, "Hey, it's going to take a couple of days to ramp back up to where I was."

[00:27:57] Matty: But I just want to continue. It's going to feel good for me to pick up where I left off and say, "Hey, I did 30 days of this." Yes, there was a sickness there. I had some sick days in between. When you link it to November or December or January, right? You can't get that back. You can't say, "Well, I'm going to finish NaNoWriMo in December," because that's not NaNoWriMo anymore. NaNoWriMo is an official thing, and it's in November, so even though you mean well, part of you is going to say, "Well, it's not quite NaNoWriMo."

[00:28:18] Matty: Well, every time NaNoWriMo comes up, I explain why I don't do it. I feel like to give equal time, I'm going to have to get a NaNoWriMo person on the podcast to represent the other view, but maybe not in October because I'm sure they're all booked up with podcast interviews in October. But, it obviously works well for some people, just consider whether it works well for you or not. Habits need to have an expiration date.

[00:28:24] Roland: Yeah, this one's big. This is all part of Slack, if you think about it. When you're trying to build a new habit, if you say, "I'm going to do this forever," and you don't like it, then eventually you're going to feel bad because you're abandoning it. So, if I'm trying to write 1,666 words per day and I don't like it, at the end of the month, whether I did it or not, if I hated it, I've learned nothing. All I've learned is that I don't like it, but I haven't learned that positive habits can help me. So, if you give yourself an expiration date, usually shorter than a long-term goal, let's say seven days, most people can do something for seven days, and seven days is a good taste test.

I'm going to try this for seven days and see, reevaluate. Do I like it? Is it working for me? And here's the language that I prefer: Is it serving me? If I continue with this habit, is it serving me well? Because if it's not, if I have to cringe and force myself, then I'm not going to be able to continue it forever, and I'm wasting my time.

So, giving it that seven days, for instance, as an expiration date, and saying, "Hey, at the end of seven days, if I reevaluate and I don't like it, I can either make it easier, change the rules, or stop doing it and replace it with something I do want to do." Because who here hasn't tried something for 21 days to build a habit, which is totally fabricated? There's no science in that at all.

[00:30:18] Matty: But you should know within a few days whether you like something or not. And giving yourself an expiration date means that you do not have to abandon it. A realistic expiration date, it's hard to say, so yeah, for seven days, ten days, whatever, if you realize, "Oh, it's not working for me," it's part of that slack and it also saves you from wasting time.

[00:30:47] Matty: Yeah, I like that idea of asking if it's serving you because I think that there's also the less common but still possible problem where you've successfully incorporated a habit into your life. It was serving you well for a while and now you're doing it without really thinking about it.

[00:31:17] Roland: Yeah, exactly. And if you have both an expiration date and a check-in date to say, "Okay, I've been doing this for a month, a year, two years, or a decade," you can assess whether it's still a valuable way to spend your time and if it's providing the benefits you were looking for.

One at a time, please

[00:31:19] Matty: And, the sixth bullet you suggested was "one at a time, please."

[00:31:24] Roland: Yeah. We have a tendency to dive right in. "I'm going to write my novel, so I'm going to write 1,666 words, I'm going to write for an hour, I'm going to get up early, I'm not going to watch Netflix." You pile all these things on at once, which all sound really good. "This is what it would take for me to finish my novel. I'm going to do all of these things." Well, that's a lot to try at once, and it's a lot to process mentally and emotionally. Giving yourself the space to try something new is important. So when you're trying five or six new things at a time, or even three, each one becomes more difficult to experience, to try, and to test, to see whether you like it.

If I try all those things at once and after a week I hate my life, my new life that I've built for myself as an author—no more Netflix, getting up early, writing an hour every day—I don't want that, right? But if you try one at a time, each one is more likely to succeed, and each can be fine-tuned to be a habit that you'll not only keep up but hopefully enjoy. You've heard of habit stacking, right? I prefer the term habit layering. Habit stacking is like piling everything on at once—Netflix, getting up early, etc. But habit layering is when you've semi-mastered a habit, it's on cruise control, like writing for an hour a week for seven to ten days, and you have the mental and emotional space to add a new one on top of it, to layer it. Something that doesn't conflict. Not writing for an hour and a half, but keeping that one and building on it. Habits take 21, 30, 90 days to build, so you keep going with that one. Then you say, "I feel I could write better if I got up a little earlier," and now you try that. You have to start small again, asking, "How much earlier can I realistically get up?" And then you consider all the factors—will I disturb my family, do I need to grind my coffee beans, etc. Then, once you're on a really good track with that second habit, you can consider layering the next one, and so on. We don't have the emotional strength to compartmentalize multiple habits at once, especially when they're all directed towards one goal. When we fail, it feels like we've failed at everything, which can be overwhelming. This is like what happens when people decide, "On Monday, I'm going to start the keto diet and go to the gym five days a week."

And, I need to start going to bed earlier because I know that's going to help me go to the gym. They do all of these things, and then after two or three weeks, they look back and realize they've stopped doing all these things. What a failure. So they give up everything, and because it was all tied together, it was one thing that they were doing.

They give up everything, and then, how long does it take to start again? Because every time you have a failure, it's that much harder to start again. No matter what it is. If you've ever been on a diet, you think, "I was on a diet last year. It didn't really work. I'm going to try it again." But you could try it right now, you could try it on Monday, but you just keep putting it off because consciously and subconsciously, last time you tried, you failed, and this time, it's probably going to be the same. So the way to mitigate that is to go through these steps: smaller dopamine hits, cutting yourself some slack, give yourself an expiration date, and do one thing at a time, and then layer them as every time you succeed.

[00:35:47] Matty: It's interesting because, as we've discussed before, I have a challenge with getting enough movement in my life, and I've talked to many guests about this. A couple of months ago, I was at a book club, and this topic came up. Someone asked me what my day was like as a full-time author, publisher, and podcaster, and I described it, mentioning how it was a very sedentary lifestyle.

Afterwards, one of the women in the book club introduced herself as the executive director of the local YMCA. She said, "I don't know if you've ever been to the YMCA, but here's my card. If you'd like a tour, give me a call, and I'd be happy to take you through it." I thought, why not? I hadn't been to the YMCA, even though it's six minutes from my house, because I had a probably decades-out-of-date idea of what they were like. But I went for a tour, and it was a very nice place with a lot of appealing features.

So, I signed up and started going. One of the things I really liked about it, illustrating many of the points we've discussed, was the app that allowed you to sign up for classes the day before. I loved that I wasn't committing to 10 weeks of yoga. It was like, "I'll do aqua aerobics, and then when I go out to the car, I'll open the app and think, 'Oh, chair yoga, that sounds like fun, I'll do that tomorrow.'" So, I had a lot of flexibility in what I was signing up for, and if I decided I didn't like aqua aerobics, I didn't have to go, and I wasn't wasting any money.

I was sticking with it and found that on the days when I went to the YMCA, I was also more likely to take the dogs for an extra walk because I was already out and about. So, one good thing led to another good thing. Then at the end of December, I got the flu and obviously didn't go to the YMCA.

[00:38:59] Matty: And then after I was over the flu, I still had this chronic cough, and nobody wants to be around someone who's coughing a lot these days. So I wasn't going to the YMCA then. And then I was on vacation, so I wasn't going to the YMCA, and I got back from vacation about a week ago. The earlier part of the story is, I used to have an item on my calendar from 10 to 11:30, which was when I blocked off time for going to the YMCA. But when I got into the habit, I took the calendar entry off because I thought I didn't need the reminder anymore. However, when I got back from vacation, it had sort of fallen off my mental radar. It wasn't that I was thinking about going to the YMCA and deciding not to, it had just disappeared from my conscious mind as something I needed to include in my day.

I realized that I should have put it back on my calendar as a reminder and kept it there until I no longer needed it as a reminder. That illustrates, in my own life, all those things about goals being small, like "yes, tomorrow I'm going to go to the YMCA," and the dopamine hit of saying "today I went to the YMCA," and all those good things. So, this is a good reminder to me to get that back on my calendar and on my actual schedule.

[00:38:59] Roland: Oh, good. I mean, there is some benefit to changing that reminder on your calendar too, because after a while, it just becomes another calendar reminder every day. You sort of tune it out.

[00:39:11] Matty: I think the benefit is that it blocked my time. So, like, I do have events that get scheduled automatically through Calendly, and it was a reminder to me, but it also prevented other things from showing up in that time block, which was important.

[00:39:25] Roland: Yeah. I like that.

[00:39:27] Matty: So, I do have to say, when I was reading over these notes ahead of time, and you were talking about the power of small and things like that, and then I look back over your bio, which ends with raising a family and working a 60-hour week day job. So, in closing, I just want to ask, personally, as someone who has achieved the things described in your bio, is there any contradiction there that we need to discuss? Like, did you say "I am going to not only raise a family but I'm going to work a 60-hour week day job, and then I'm also going to do all the things you're doing on top of that"? How does that all mesh together? How does that work logically together?

[00:40:03] Roland: Well, my goal is not to be a full-time author. My goal is just to write books that people enjoy. Yes, I do want to make some money from my books, but that's not my primary goal. Making money from my books is a good goal, right, and it's a strong part of my goals. But I have no illusions about being a full-time author. I wrote books that I really wanted to, mostly they're health and fitness books. I have some urban fantasy coming up, but right now, they're health and fitness, and I had a message that I wanted to get out there. So putting it out there, I knew that I had a family, which was important, and sometimes I've had a full-time job, and sometimes I've had jobs that, you sort of... I was a health coach and an author coach, and I did consulting for printing and publishing companies.

[00:41:58] Roland: So, it all adds up to those things, but that was where I was primarily making my money. So I had to say, "Here's what I'm doing. This is my life. I have a family. I can't neglect my family, right?" And I also have these jobs, this work. So I looked at how I could build a writing career around that foundation. That's where I came up with the idea that I could write for an hour a day. Luckily, I've trained myself over time to be able to write without needing a solid block of time. Sometimes I can write in the morning, or if I have a longer lunch break, I can take half an hour of my lunch and write then. If I have the energy after work, I can write a little bit there. So over time, it's become like sometimes it's an hour and a half of writing, sometimes it's half an hour, but it's built around my life, rather than my life being formed by it. Yeah.

[00:41:58] Matty: That's so cool. It's always lovely to speak with you and so helpful to be reminded of these things that make so much sense when you describe them but are sometimes hard to remember in the moment when you get all caught up in whatever the latest thing is that you want to do.

[00:42:11] Roland: I do have a freebie that people can download if they go to indestructibleauthor.com/habits. They can download this thing; it's got a poster you can print off, stick on your fridge or your desk, and it will give you all these habits. It goes into a bit more detail on how to set your goals, how to set your habits, and all the ways to get your little dopamine hits. And I think signing up for my email list is a dopamine hit in and of itself.

[00:42:37] Matty: Perfect. Thank you so much, Roland.

[00:42:39] Roland: You're very welcome.

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Podcast Show Notes

On The Indy Author Podcast, we discuss the writing craft, the publishing voyage, and how we can navigate our way to the readers who will love our books. Click the links below for the show notes for episodes since 200, including summaries and transcripts.

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!

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