The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 58 – 10 Steps to Find a Writing Partner

Have you ever thought about sharing the writing on a book or short story with a collaboration partner?

Autumn and Jesper discuss not only tips on why authors team up but also layout steps on how to find someone to write with, including how they ended up as writing and business partners (which is quite a story!).

There are definitely some hurdles to navigate when and if you decide to write with someone, including just if a writing partner will fit your style and expectations.

Check out the FREE Ultimate Fantasy Writer's Starter Kit that Autumn mentioned in the episode at http://ultimatefantasywritersguide.com/starter-kit/.

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Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper and I'm Autumn. This is episode 58 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and we're going to talk about collaboration with other authors today just like a autumn and I write books together and we're probably not going to touch much upon the actual ins and outs of how we write together, but the listener, if you want to know more about that, then just let us know and we can make that a future topic for another episode.

But today we keeping it, we sort of taking a step back and William steps investigate why you might want to consider collaborating with another author, but then also unpack the crucial question of how do you actually find someone to collaborate with. If that's what you want to do. So it's a, it's a pretty packed episode today, so hopefully that explanation sets things up correctly. But uh, yeah, I think that's it. Autumn isn't it?

Autumn (1m 29s): I think so. It's sort of the broad picture of you and if someone wants to know the ins and outs of what it's really like to collaborate closely with another author, especially one who's on the other side of an ocean, uh, we can touch on that one in the future. Yeah, indeed. So how have you been? Oh, you know, my life, it's always a bit of an adventure. I think that's just going to have to be like my slogan. Maybe they'll have it, put it on my toe. Tombstone, I always joke that I wanted am my obituary to say, um, where my tombstone to say to be continued.

I always seem to have something else going, but it looks like I love my apartment that way. I've been staying in since, uh, November, but I think the time here is coming to an end. It's a little expensive and it's in town, it's noisy. And we just got this lead on this little tiny cabin in the woods. So I'm kind of really hopeful that this ends up working for us. And then we'll have a chance to move into this great cabin.

Jesper (2m 31s): Yeah, you're used to not having too much space, so I guess it's not too bad.

Autumn (2m 36s): Yeah, it's am. It's tiny. It's like it's kind of a tiny house, tiny cabin. But I'm so looking forward to not hearing traffic and just as a stream running in front of it and there'll be birds and you can just hear the wind in the leaves and yeah, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. This all works out.

Jesper (2m 54s): Yeah. The, those parts that you mentioned there about not, not hearing traffic and birds and whatnot don't pop sounds quite good to be, but I think this, the size of the place would drive me bonkers. I have to admit, I've never, I've never had hopes of living in a tiny house or a tiny cabin. I even, the one Adam and I had built was, you know, it was like 450 square feet downstairs, 500 square feet. So two floors of that. That's a thousand square feet. That's a lot of room for two people. But this is more on the 100 to 150 square feet sits scale and it'll be, we keep talking, we can always write a book about our experience.

That is true. But on the other hand, of course you don't have to kids like we do it, I'll place you. So that helps a bit. Yeah. It's just a very small packable dog. We should be also been, how was your week? Um, I, I've, I've, I've been good or I'm, I'm starting to feel good again. So it's an injury. Yeah, it's about, about three weeks back. Uh, I was taking the tress out in the morning and the surface was slippery out there and of course I didn't notice, so I actually fail.

And then I landed right on top of my wrist. So am it's like three weeks back and it's only just now that it, it starts to feel normal again. So it, it, I, I guess as we get older it takes longer to heal. It is. And I know, is there anything more tragic to a writer than injuring your wrist, even though you do do dictation. So I guess, but yeah, a lot of typing that you do. I do a lot of typing as well. Yeah. And, and it was really annoying because the same day when I failed, we were going to host, uh, our youngest kid's birthday party at the swimming pool and I, well we, so we had a lot of kids coming in and what, I was not going to swim myself anyway, so, so that didn't matter.

But you know, we were small, like keeping an eye on them or whatnot. But when I fail, of course it did hurt, but it wasn't that bad, you know, it was just like, ow that hurts. And then you sort of keep going. So we went to the swimming pool and it was already hurting in the locker room a bit. But then after a while, wow. After we've been there, so I think probably a couple of hours had passed since I fail. I just couldn't move my, either my hand or my fingers anymore at that point.

So it was just like, yeah, it just hurt like crazy. So that was no good. Well, I'm glad it's getting better. That sounds horrible. And I'm trying to visualize trying not to visualize the idea of wrangling a whole bunch of young children who are old enough to be running around, but not old enough to be really responsible at a swimming party. Yeah. But it works. And you usually people listening to what I say, I know I'm, I'm a referee as well, so I'm used to, I'm used to telling people what I want them to do and usually they listen to the voice of am, you know,

Autumn (5m 58s): you better listen to me or else that could be useful.

Jesper (6m 1s): Yeah, of course. Yeah. I dunno. But also maybe on a different note, I wanted to mention that last night I finished the last episode of the witches.

Autumn (6m 13s): Oh, we just finished washing that too. What did you think the entire season, just this first season one? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious too. What do you think then? Um, it's funny, I read a review recently and they had only watched the first half and I highly agree with that review of the first half that I was not getting into Gerald's am character at all. I didn't like his deep voice where he was like always in a monitored, in the Husky distant character, especially compared to what I've learned since then about the story in the books.

But uh, Yetta for when she got involved and they finally linked up those two storylines. Oh, it was a blast. It was really fun and I enjoyed it. So I was, I didn't realize we were on the last episode and I went to play another one. I'm like, no. So it was good enough that I was like, wait, I'm not done with it yet. I was ready to continue. So I won't say it's my favorite episode or show ever, but I at least started getting engaged.

What did you think? Compounded.

Jesper (7m 22s): Okay. Now I'd say it's a bit funny because I feel like it was almost like a roller coaster ride in in the sense that the first three episode really did not help me at all. It almost had this kind of feeling of, okay, now we're going to a hundred new monster kind of thing. You know that, and I was a bit afraid, is this just going to be an entire season where each episode is just a new kind of monster that we are hunting because I don't feel like that's not what I want to. I like when there was a story arc that goes across every single episode, but not like each episode is just like a single entity almost like I, I don't, I don't like that.

So I was a bit concerned about that, but then when we got to episode for it became a lot better. And then I started like, okay, this is, this is really good. But then again, towards the end of it, I felt like maybe it was the last two episodes, but they started doing all these time jumps between the past and depressing. Yeah. And because you couldn't see any difference on the characters, whether we were in the past or in the present. It happened quite often that I got confused about where are we now in the story is just a pass or is a depressant.

And it took away some of the enjoyment for me to be on it.

Autumn (8m 32s): Yeah, I agree. When I think I sat up when they finally, when you finally realized that, Oh, all this other, there was this one actually two timelines, whether they're all past being put against this third character who is, I guess it's present or their future. And suddenly you realize that and you're like, Whoa, wait, you, they could have done a lot more, they could have something

Jesper (8m 56s): filmed it differently, different color, different lighting, I don't know, but just something. Yeah, just just make it clear that now we're on a different timeline. Right. There was something there and I think the books are a little bit different that they're based on am and then there's a huge role playing game that is spun off of it. And so I don't know if any of that carries through, but I am that was, I did get a little bit annoyed at that. I'm like, that was kind of, yeah. Not the best plotting that, not the best way of demonstrating that there's a different timeline going on.

Yeah. Yeah, indeed. And I, I think I would say I definitely recommend people giving it a try. And I don't know. I hope I'm not going to get an angry mob after me now, but I, but I, I picked up that the, uh, the Witcher was the most watched show on Netflix in all of 2019. And keep in mind, it was only released right before the end of the year. So it's been watched so much that you won't believe it. And, uh, I don't know, in my view, that speaks more about the, which your brand than it does about the quality of this TV show, to be honest.

So I hope not. So nobody's going to keep yourself. We're saying that, but, but that's, that's how I feel weak on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast. So there was a post on the amwritingfantasy Facebook group that really caught my attention. Yeah. I'm, I'm not going to share the name of the person posting it here because I haven't asked the person if they were okay with that. So I'm not gonna do that. But, uh, but I think that the post touched upon a concern that I believe that many Sharon, it, uh, that's why I wanted to bring it up here as well.

So it goes like this, the post that quote, is anyone disheartened by the over-saturation of the market? I find I get a little depressed when I see all those authors dropping book after book series after series and doing well too. No hate on their business. It's just makes me feel like when I finally finished one of my little projects, it's not going to have a chance in hell. So I shortened that post a bit, to be honest.

There was a bit more, but uh, but uh, I don't know. What are your thoughts about that? Autumn I think that's, that's something a lot of people feel probably or think, Oh, I think so. I can't imagine being a new author right now cause I'm uh, you know as a, I've been doing this since 2012 and so I've gotten a sh don't tell anyone. I actually just released a book 16, which was one with my husband that, and he and I had been working on for a year and a half. We finally just kind of snuck that one out the tour. But I make this as excited as I am about that.

It is a challenge to, to publish. When I first started, you know, there was, I don't think there's even 2 million eBooks on Amazon and I don't even know. You

Autumn (11m 54s): can't, it's hard to find out how many books are there now. And it's, it's just, it's beyond competitive. I keep saying eventually something will have to be done that Amazon's going to not be able to keep. I mean, can you imagine the servers to store all these books if nothing's ever pulled off? I don't know what's going to happen in the future and it's so tough and tight out there. So yeah, I feel, I feel that is a longstanding author is one with lots of books and with one that's still hard to be visible.

Jesper (12m 27s): Yeah. There was a, another person who posted a response, which I think sort of hit the nail on the head. It, it was a quote from Craig Martel am and Craig Martel said, eh, it's a rising tide lift. A rising tide lifts all boats. Readers read a book far faster than we can write them. If those books are successful than your books can be successful. So long as you have equal quality of cover blurb, story and marketing, you can't expect to compete unless you make the same effort as the successful authors.

It's a real job. That's what Craig, Marcelo said. Yeah, I think it is true. You know that there are far more far more readers out there, then we can write books for our sales. So, so that is certainly true. But on the other hand, it is also true what you just said in the days where you could just upload a book on Amazon and is expected to sell that. That's, that's, that's gone. It's not gonna happen. So I perfectly understand the concern raised by that initial question there. Um, but yeah, I don't know.

I do think it's, it is a matter of putting out professional work. Absolutely. And also you need to view your author Korea as a longterm plate. Yeah, yeah. I fully get the fact that one you, once you put out that what you're one, one little project as it was mentioned, that that's not going to move the needle much for you at all. Um, and yeah, as autumn just said, putting up 16 books that didn't happen in six months, Ida. Right. It takes years, lot of years and sometimes a lot of help.

You and I write together, I read my husband, Hey this, this sounds like a little bit about this episode maybe, but yes. Oh yeah, that's true. But just, no, and it's just building the audience. It takes time. Um, and it takes years and, and if, if you look at it long term, then I think maybe you will get less disheartened because if you look at it like, okay, I'm going to release this book and I wanted to compete and I want to earn, let's just say a lot of money for lack of better term of, of, of mentioning it, but I want to and a lot of money, uh, and I'm going read this one book and I'm going to compete against all these authors who have like six different series with three books into the meats and whatnot.

Then of course you're going to get this heart and, and, and, but I, I think it's important not to think about it like that, but more look at like, this is a longterm thing. And at some point I will also have six series with three books in them. Um, but while I'm working to get there, I'll make sure to put up professional work with professional covers. Uh, the best blurbs they can be. And I'll learn how to market the books and then I'll sort of do it one brick at a time. I think that's, that's how you need to look at it.

And we are going to talk a lot more about that in the self publishing success course that we have on our to do list for 2020.

Autumn (15m 23s): And I'm going to jump in with, cause you just did a fantastic segue into a comment I just received. It might've been late in December, but it was sort of about professional writing and uh, someone who from the amwritingfantasy fantasy Facebook group actually texted me, emailed me through Facebook messenger that said I wanted to thank you for the ultimatefantasywritersguide starter kit I've looked up hundreds of people who help new writers, but yours by far is the best. I'm going to have my daughter watch them. Thank you for an honest explanation on how to get started.

And so obviously they've just met snuck much because I love knowing that, you know, we've helped, this is going to give it to his daughter, but Hey, you know, you just mentioned, you know, write quality books and we actually have a starter kit that is 100% free. So edit it helps you get started on the right footing. So if anyone is out there, we can get you a link and you can go work on the starter kit and hopefully get you going on that first brick in your, your wonderful castle you're building.

Jesper (16m 30s): Yeah. Maybe you can make a note autumn to uh, to put the link in the show notes so people can just click through there. Um, and maybe, maybe I should mention as well that the self public success costs that we're going to put out, that's going to be free to, we're just too nice and we inserted, I think that's the right word. It's probably true too. But if you, if you don't want to miss that one, then I recommend going to a amwritingfantasy.com or use that link in the am in the show notes that uh, hopefully autumn we'll put in there because then you'll get onto our email list and then you will not miss it when we release this free course as well later this year.

And uh, that way also in the meantime we'll send you some writing and marketing tips on the emails. So that's nice and easy and uh, yeah, just uh, get on that list. There collaborations. So autumn I have a lot of notes on collaboration.

Autumn (17m 34s): That's fantastic. You are the note taker. I am the a pantser and so that's sort of why we're good at collaborating I think cause we put up, we accent each other, but let's, we'll start with yours and I will add in and continue to grow on your ideas.

Jesper (17m 53s): All right. Yeah. So I was actually thinking that maybe we could sort of take, take the conversation in three different steps. So step number one could be just to talk a bit about why you would even want to collaborate with somebody else. I think that's a, that's probably a good starting point is, um, and I have a few notes here and then of course you can add to it, uh, as well. Uh, but my first point about collaborating was basically, well, you're splitting your workload and you're also splitting the cost involved in publishing.

Obviously the downside is that you also have to split the rent years, but, but, but, but at least it eases off the workload. And especially like we, we know that a lot of authors are working day jobs as well. Um, so that, that's very common. Um, and in that case it is nice to have somebody else to share the workload with. Um, especially, and maybe, you know, if you're not as crazy as we are where we are both writing fiction books and doing nonfiction Ray to stuff like this podcast for the authors, then you can write books twice as fast.

In our case, we can't because we also have all this other stuff to do, but at least that's how it works. Yeah. Um, and also rather than actually writing together, when we were talking collaboration, we should also mention that it could also be that you just want an accountability partner or like a critique partner. Um, and we're not talking about using ghost writers yet, but, but more somebody like you work very closely with one person.

You might eat SPI writing your own books, but, but you just am hold each other accountable or help each other writing better books or whatever it may be that that is of course another option I did. I don't know, that's a bit of a, a side note, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

Autumn (19m 47s): Makes sense. I think unless you have more to add. But I think one of my big things for collaboration is one writing does tend to be very lonely, very isolating. It's something you spend a lot of time in your head. And by having someone to share that with, one gets you like, Oh there's more to life than you know, sitting there and thinking about stuff. But it gets you through the writer's blocks better. I think the inspiration and sometimes the ideas generated by talking to someone else, it gets your excitement going, your enthusiasm going you, you go over the levels, the little hurdles and stuff in your own writing career, um, cause someone's encouraging you or you're just getting both so excited about doing stuff that you know, someone else is there to make sure that you don't fall flat on your face.

So that's one of my things that, you know, collaboration, especially if you have a lot of self writer doubts, it's fantastic to join with someone else who can kind of talk you off the ledge and make sure you keep going and don't doubt yourself a corner where you're not writing as well as maybe like inspire. Like I said, sometimes bouncing ideas off of someone else, even if you end up in a completely different direction, they might've given you at least the idea of a completely different direction and your ideas can really grow and blossom.

Jesper (21m 5s): Yeah, I agree. And I, and I think also at least what we've seen is that am you are our ideas or be it world building our plot ideas or whatever it may be. It, I feel like it becomes better because compared to what I could just do on my own, because you have somebody to bounce ideas off and especially if you, if you compliment each other's weak spots, then it just becomes a lot better. Um, and I think that that is

Autumn (21m 36s): real big wind that you're going to get from, from collaboration. As you know, especially authors who use beta readers, this is sort of what they're using them for. For looking for those plot holes. This is doing it even sooner and in a different way. And the result, especially except you're working with like another professional, someone else who really knows the jargon, knows the plots, knows how to really build a story. Uh, what you end up with is it's not one plus one equals two. It's more like one plus one is equaling three to five. You getting a better game.

Jesper (22m 8s): Hmm. Yeah. And it's actually more common than, than, than you might think that too. Collaboration between authors. So I just looked up before recording just to give you some, some more, let's say famous famous examples. Uh, so I had a few I could mention here. So Neil Gaiman and Terry practice row together. Um, so did Steven King and Peter Straub. And in fantasy we have Anne McCaffrey wrote with the Mercedes Lackey and Marion Zimmer, Bradley and then the where we will known, uh, James Patterson, probably one of the world's best known authors.

He also collaborates, uh, he does all the plotting himself and then he delivers a very detailed outline at the maybe 60 to 80 pages as far as I could gather from the, uh, the research I did on the internet. But it looks like an outline of 60 to 80 pages is what he delivers to the people who, who write with him. And then he has a very intense back and forth conversations with the authors, uh, for writing the book. So if you look up James Patterson on, um, uh, on, on Amazon, you'll also see that a lot of his books says James Patterson on it.

And then it says with, and then there was another author named that's because he collaborates and has other people, um, writing his books as well. So it's not just some crazy stuff that we're talking about. A lot of the famous people do this as well. So before we get into how do we actually find someone to collaborate with, I was that maybe you could just share a bit about, uh, how, how does it feel to collaborate with somebody else, you know, uh, uh, either than what we just talked about, why you will want to do it.

But what are the upsides and downsides? Maybe we could, we have a few, few other things we could add here and what, what it's more like what should people be mindful about, I guess.

Autumn (24m 10s): Well that makes sense. Yeah, that's very true. So I, yeah, I guess you have to be well to play well with others. I mean am I think everyone has that experience. Maybe in high school where you had to collaborate with somebody on a am term paper or something or project partners on, maybe it didn't go well. So I think there's that interfere that you're gonna end up collaborating and it's going to be a huge issue. And um, I don't know.

I found, I guess if you find the right person, it's, that's not necessary at all. I always have introduced to you, yes. Part of people when I talk about, um, what we do together, that it's like, you know, ending up with am the perfect, uh, term partner pilot project partner because you always like do a 120%. So it's very, very useful. It's fantastic when someone's always making you feel like you're not doing enough and you were usually the person who was doing it all.

So those are the good things to the benefits that you can, you know, you're not going it alone, that you're going to actually be able to share a workload and share inspiration and yeah, it leads to maybe sharing the profits, but hopefully it's going to be a better situation than when you're struggling and doing it alone because, Hey, even if the book doesn't sell, you can talk to each other and maybe share the tasks of getting it to sell better. So it's not, it's a much friendlier and welcoming kind of feeling instead of always feeling like crap, now what do I do?

Yeah,

Jesper (25m 44s): yeah. I would also, I feel it intensely gratifying to, to, to work with us. We're a lot autumn because it's, it's, it's just a lot different than when you're doing all everything or all by yourself. You know you have also just the fact that, I mean if we go to the real bedrock of it, you know, you know you have somebody who understand the ins and outs of, of life as a writer, right. And and you have somebody who she has your calls and you can, you can work together to achieve them and that that's, I don't know, it's just, it's different than doing everything by yourself.

And of course you can go on to am what, what may be Facebook groups or whatever to build a network with other authors and that's all great. But, but it's still different compared to having somebody who she asked your specific goal and you're both working towards achieving those that that's, that's very different than, than talking to a more general author community, so to speak. No, that makes sense. That's very true. Yeah. I think the only downside I can think of it, it just plays off a bit of what you said as well, that you have to collaborate well with others.

But it's more like, to me there was a, there's a big thing to consider in terms of if, if you have trouble compromising and taking other people's input to hot and maybe, except that what you find is an excellent idea. Somebody else might think, uh, that all your collaboration partner might think that, that that's not quite what I like and if some people are prefers to have a day away, let's put it like that.

And, uh, if you're one of the persons who prefer to have it your way, then it just becomes really difficult to collaborate with somebody else because you have to reach some compromises. That's, that's just, uh, the name of, of the collaboration game man, because we could, uh, we could call it that. So, um, let's move on to the next section here. And, uh, that was more about how do you find somebody to collaborate with and yeah, that I sort of have a whole list of things here in terms of, uh, how to find somebody.

I actually, I, I put it into 10 steps, so I thought that was the easiest way to do it.

Autumn (28m 10s): Okay. Well, I like 10 steps. Seems very fair to let's go ahead and see. I'll see what I can add to your steps.

Jesper (28m 20s): Yeah. But I was almost thinking be before I get into this, uh, into these 10 steps, because these 10 steps are sort of very, I don't, I don't think mechanical is the right way to put it, but it is very much like, okay, I want to find somebody to collaborate with, give me a checklist and then I start, I start building to watch that. Right? That's sort of the, that's how the 10 steps are built. So, but why I want to start at different places because there is a lot of ways organically to find somebody to collaborate with like am very true.

And maybe maybe you could share a bit autumn about how you and I started to collaborating because that was certainly not intentional and, and I just want to, I just want the listeners to understand first that, uh, before I go into these very mechanical steps that there are other ways than what I'm talking about here in a second.

Autumn (29m 14s): Yeah. You can be the crazy pantser. That's me. Um, but it's true. I think, well, I think the first thing is understanding the feeling that no matter what you do, if you're going to collaborate with someone, unless there's someone you've known for a very long time, it's always going to feel like a risk and almost like asking somebody out in the date. So that's okay. Just embraced that. But, uh, for us, I mean I have, I had known for a little while on Twitter and we had collaborated am on your fantasy map.

I book I believe, cause I'd done some world building. And so we kind of started talking about world building, but it was peripheral and I was also on your email list. So we emailed a bit once in a while. Yes, that's right. So we kind of knew what each other was doing. Um, and I had just released the ultimatefantasywritersguide as a course and I had the amwritingfantasy platform and it was starting to grow and I was honestly hiking and on this 10 mile hike, um, I was thinking, I need help.

I felt like this was growing and I couldn't do as much as I needed to. I couldn't be everywhere. And I was thinking about people I knew who seemed to have their stuff together. And I knew you had a YouTube channel and you were, you had books and you were promoting things. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to reach out to you and see, um, if you wanted to help out on, basically it was just the website. It was with my idea was like, Hey, you want to co-run this website with me?

And so out of the blue I sent you an email and know what you're going to get. You kind of said, ah, can you clarify this a bit? I have some ideas. And I'm like, Oh, send me your ideas and you sent me like a business plan. They're like, well crap, that is, so here we are two years later running a podcast. Yeah, yeah. I think it's uh, yeah, I was just about to say three years, but actually I lost count.

I think that, yeah, it does it better. I think we're into our third year if you want to count those two plus years. Yeah, nevermind. So there is that way of creating collaborative collaboration where you can cold call somebody that you think is, you know, doing a good job and say, Hey, you want to try this out and see how it goes. And that's what we did. We started small, we started with little things and we've each year, each month and at this rate it seems like it's a tweet. Can we keep building on what we're doing?

Yes. Yeah. Now we, we sort of have a fully fledged company running here almost again. Yeah, it's really exciting. It's, it's 2020 is going to be groundbreaking or friendly, maybe finally getting above the ground. So it's really exciting. Yeah.

Jesper (32m 8s): Okay, good. So, so I just wanted to am that story to be out there as well because, so that people can hear that there are lots of ways to do this stuff. But I really tried in preparation of this episode to think hard about how would I go about it if I, let's say you listen to this podcast and I, I, and I am assuming here that your goal is to make a living from writing in my Tim steps. But let's just assume that that's your goal. And from listening to this podcast, you're thinking, actually, I think I would like to try that out, but how do I it?

So I thought I sat down and I really thought about how would I do it if I knew that that was what I wanted, but I didn't have any context to anybody. I didn't know how to get started. So, so that's what I laid out in, in 10 steps here. Okay. And, uh, I think, feel free to interrupt me on along the way he autumn because otherwise it's going to be a long monologue. I'll keep you paced. Alright, so step number one, uh, first step is, of course, you need to start building a list of, uh, author names that writes in the same shop as you.

And that's not too hot. Uh, you know, you can, you can go to Amazon. They, these authors will probably appear in your also bots or you can just find them by going to the category section on Amazon. You know, if you're writing Epic fantasy go to Epic fantasy and start writing down names of authors who are releasing books. Um, that will give you a long list of course. So you need to stop somewhere, try, try to try to uh, build quite a good list there.

Uh, then I would go and I would check if they have a decent social media following and if they are active, actively posting anything on their social media platforms. Uh, so this doesn't mean that you have to go in after any big names at all because often it's actually better to find somebody who's slightly smaller because then both of you will be equally motivated to building a career. Right? So if somebody is too big, then it's not, but try to find somebody who has, this has a decent following.

So did you know that they are actively doing stuff and they are, they active in the market and so that, that gives you a pretty good list of authors. Hopefully you will be able to delete some of the names off the list just based off that. But so you still have a pretty long list here at step number two. So the next thing to check is whether or not these candidates are able to finish any levels. So you want to find someone who's am yeah.

You know, productive. Yes. Because the worst thing is that a lot of people like to want, I want to write books, but they never finished anything. And that's not the partner you want to work with, especially in that, again, as I am assuming that you want to build a career from it. So you want somebody who can finish novels. So I'm not saying that you have to find somebody who have published 20 novels, uh, to be a good candidate. Not at all. But if they at least have a few books to their name, maybe you can find the let's say three at a minimum on, on Amazon to their name, right.

Then you know, okay, they know how to finish a book. Uh, and you also know by then that they have some experience writing, which is also a good thing. Yes, definitely. Um, yeah, and they also, of course, having published books, they will also know what's involved in publishing and uh, you're not also not accidentally ending up with a mentor instead of a collaboration partner because that's what you're looking for here. So, um, that I think that's important.

Uh, and then also here in step number two, I would also check if there is a decent number of reviews on those books. So again, I'm not saying that there has to be a ton. Let's just say, did you want these 10 reviews on those books? And the average rating should be fairly good as well. So let's say about for that gives you some starting evidence, at least at this author candidate on your list here. The person knows how to finish book. They know how to, they know how to market themselves at least a bit because they have a social media following, somewhat of a social media following, I should say.

Um, and uh, they, they are able to produce novelty that readers enjoy because of the, uh, uh, about for average on the reviews. Right too. So that's a pretty good starting point, isn't it? That's a good way of, you know, you're looking for someone who's productive, knows what they're doing, um, can get the job done, understands the marketing and is also writing, you know, something quality so that, you know, if kind of, you know, hit your horse, hit your car to a horse, you want to get one that's, you know, got to run the whole race.

Yeah. So next one is number three. So now you have, uh, still still probably a pretty long candidate list. Uh, that shouldn't be hundreds of people on this list, but, but let's say the, you've, let's say you, you're down at like 20 or something just to make up a number. So let's say you have 20 author names on the list now where all the step one and two criteria has been met. So you go to these 20 people's websites and then I would make sure that I find the websites looking professional.

Uh, and that's something that was just slapped together. Very good. Uh, because, um, if this author is looking to build a career, there should be a sign up form on their website indicating that the person is building an email list. So if you either find somebody whose website looks and amateurish or there is no signups to any email list and you delete those names off the list. No, I agree. That's a very good point. So they kind of have that am yeah. Professional level that hopefully if you're trying to do this professionally, you're looking for as well.

Yeah. So whatever you have left on the list, you now join these people's email lists and then you look down, well, yeah, kind of, but, but what you're looking for is one that you want to see if they are actually sending out emails. Uh, so do they have an autoresponder going that sends out emails, soda, so that they actually contacting people who sign up. And also the other part is of course you want to start getting impression of this person who, who are they? What are they writing about?

And you know, just like a general impression. So that's step number four. So number five is then building on, on that. So you need to start corresponding by replying to these emails. And just like we said early on, you and I did this a bit in the beginning as well. I did. Now I'm starting to wonder if, if you had this plan the whole time. I remember you were the one reaching out to me. And I can't even say that even if you hated me, it, it, it just popped in my head.

But I would, uh, I would start replying to the emails now, uh, at this stage, um, because this should allow you to reduce your list of candidates further because there will be some of them where you just feel like you connect better with this person. Then what? Then versus somebody else. Don't reply back, you know, they just ha, or an empty vaults over them. Yeah. So that's a very good indication. So see what kind of messages you can reply. And this is, it's really not meant as you're trying to manipulate them into doing anything.

You're just trying to have genuine conversation with them to get a feel about this person and that sort of understand this person. I sort of have a good chemistry with that, that that's what you're doing. And then you should look to reduce your, your list to like a shortlist. Now let's say you want to get down to five candidates at this point. So cross out all the names where you feel like this doesn't really work for me or eh, yeah. Yes. Autumn said if they're not replying at all.

So at this stage you have five left and uh, you can now just email them and say, uh, you know, Hey, I've replied to a few. Uh, you should not say email them. That's what I'm trying to stay. Just say, Hey, I apply, apply to fewer of your emails, so now let, let's collaborate. But that's not what you're not going to do, right, because that's not gonna work. Um, B, besides also at this stage, you don't even know if you like the story telling style or their writing style. So what I would do now, um, since now you have a more manageable list of only five people on it, step number six would be the that you go and read a novel that they've written.

So you download a one of their novels from Amazon, the first industries probably, uh, or whatever. If it's standalone, that's fine to download that and you am you read the novels and that will probably allow you to remove one or two more names off the list where it just feels like, I, I don't like this way of telling stories or this is not how I like to do. Right. So get rid of those. I would always get me, I'd probably end up with somebody who writes in first person and I just can't do that. So it's a really good indicator.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So step number seven is then asking, so a lot depends on how much are and also how well your email correspondence has been going already. So, but in general, I wouldn't simply ask if they want to collaborate. That's not gonna work. And uh, I don't know who, who knows? Just because you like one of their books, that doesn't mean that you will be a good match to work together. Right.

So furthermore, I would say that this other author might not even have considered that they should be working with somebody else. So at direct ask, like that will probably either end in a decline or they will, they aren't they, let's say they accept and then you end up with a collaboration partner where you might like their light a writing style, but, but then when you get into it, you find out that their work mentality is just not matching yours.

So then you have an issue. So how do we get around? So I think, yeah, so, so how'd you get around that? Is that I think it's best to start small. So when you reach out to them, so mentioned which of their books it was that you just read and especially important mentioned why you like their book and also make sure that you left a review of the book on Amazon or any other platforms where it might be published on so that you can basically tell them, so I read you a book title, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I really liked it, uh, because of blah, blah, blah, blah. And I have left a review on all the different platforms for you. And then you can proceed from there in that email to basically the next section of the email. You can proceed to offer the person something valuable. Um, so it has to be something that is easy for them to say yes to. So it could be that you offer them to share their book to your email list because you really liked it.

So, even if you have a small list that that might work, or maybe you have a blog or something and you can offer the Dem an author interview, you know, anything that gets their author name, eh, some exposure that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise, that that's sort of the asset you're aiming for. So you can be creative about it. Uh, but, but that's what you're looking for. So that's the ask here in step number seven. So if we then move on to step number eight, now you basically got a foot in the door.

So where you might have shared that book with your own email list or maybe you did the author interview when you posted that on your blog or whatever it may be. So you have some sort of connection with this person by now, or these persons I should say, because you're probably doing it with several different people. So where you go from here becomes a question of how to build the relationship. So it all will depend on the email conversations you've had so far and perhaps you need to email back and forth a bit more before you go any further.

But where you want to get to is to slowly familiarize yourself, um, with this author's work, with the aim to work on something smaller, collaborating, something smaller together. I like that. Uh, so step number eight is basically just about trying to sort of expand upon the relationship a bit so that you feel comfortable that you could, uh, work together on something small. I like that. So sort of like a short story or just something small.

Yeah. So that, that's basically step number nine. So we're getting towards the end now. So step number nine is basically, um, to figure out if this person's Workman tality fits well with us. And the only way to do that is to work on something together. So as you said, a short story collection, for example, could be a good idea. But again, make sure that you make it really easy to say yes. So if you offer for example, to say, if you say, okay, I will handle all the publishing, I will handle all the splitting of the revenue and all that.

Eh, let's say troublesome stuff that you are the author might be thinking of, Oh my God, I don't have time to do all that. If you offer to do all of that, then it becomes an easy sale. And if it's only like a short story collection, I mean there's not much at at, at risk for the other author here anyway. So. So they probably won't mind trusting you with doing the revenue splitting even if it, because it's going to be minor anyway. Yeah. So you'll then, let's say you, you go with this, you couldn't be creative and think of other ways as well, but, but I think the short stories is a good way because it doesn't take too much time either.

Um, so you then work together on this and stuff and you will figure out whether or not you are actually working well together. Um, and if you do, then hopefully by this stage you will have narrowed down your list of candidates down to basically only one, right? So at this point you need to find out, okay, we are working well together and all the different steps be before this step was successful as well. So he is basically the point where you can then start saying a maybe would it be Ida for us to collaborate together on a for level or even a series if you want to pitch that, really want to take a bite out.

Yeah. If you're gonna play a dangerous like, like autumn does, then that's what he can do. Jumping into the fire from the frying pan and not knowing where I'm going. Yeah. But that then my step number 10 is basically, so of course, uh, at number nine there will be a yes or no. And then of course if you get a no, and that was one of the other people on the list that you also did a short story with that you really liked and you can move on to that person. Um, I know that sounds a bit horrible. It sounds like you're shopping for people, but uh, but if you really want to collaborate with somebody, did somebody, and it doesn't happen organically for you to find somebody, then this is a way to do it.

Um, but we are missing step 10. Yes. So what does top 10 yeah, so step 10, now you've already found somebody you want to collaborate with am but before you stopped any like large scale collaboration on full series or something like that, I would say at this step 10 if you have low got into the agreement to say, yeah, I could be interested in collaborating on a full novel, uh, oil, even that series, then I would make sure to have a meeting with that person.

Um, and there I would say it doesn't have to be a face to face meeting, but it should be a video quality so that you can see each other. You could be Skype or zoom or something like, uh, I think, uh, no, actually I think back in the day a autumn I think,

Autumn (48m 27s): yeah. Say we still have not been on the same continent. So am I was close, I was in London and you're over in Copenhagen but we didn't quite made up that time. So yeah, we still haven't met. So then we've been together doing this for two plus years.

Jesper (48m 44s): Yeah, exactly. But yeah, you use Skype or zoom or whatever, but the key is that you get to talk with each other while you can see each other and then the purpose of that meeting will be that you need to align what it is that you want to achieve and basically sort of you lay out, okay these are my goals and the other person lays out the, these are my goals and you want to see that there was a match. I'd sorta the one person doesn't say, well I would actually like to collaborate on a series and uh, I don't really mind if it takes us 10 years because I have a lot of other stuff that I actually do.

But you are wanting to build a career. So you are saying, well I was hoping we could do it in one DMX album. Right. Then you have an issue. So it's much better to get that out of the way before you get started. And, uh, and I think that's 10 steps

Autumn (49m 31s): I like that. That's definitely very true. And I definitely thought the, where you're mentioning, you know, not just coming at blurting out, well you collaborate with me because I hadn't really thought of it too. You said that. But I've actually had two people prior to starting to collaborate with you who kind of came out of the blue and like, Hey, I like what you do when you do this with me. And I was like, uh, no. I think it gets a gut reaction. It's like, I don't know who you are and I don't know if I really want to share what I'm working on, but

Jesper (49m 59s): we've built this up gradually to where we're writing novels together. It's not, it wasn't our first step. No, no, indeed. It was not. Uh, we, we started out with the amwritingfantasy stuff. For we had a lot of plans from the get go with that. But like the, but the fiction collaboration was something that came later on in the process. But I, I, and I think I understand why the gut reaction is to say no if somebody just reaches out coat like that because honestly, I mean I, I would, I would do same thing because there are trainings in hopes that there is there some private, but yeah, but that's the one thing.

But I think the other thing that I was thinking about was more like it's a big, big time investment. Right? And you don't want to go in and say okay to something or yes to something that is a huge time investment. Unless you know that this is a person. That one I liked the person, no, I know that they are professional and three, I know that they, they, they have a good work, work ethic, that master's mind and we have the same kind of goals. I mean if you kind of tick all of those boxes, you're going to shoot, you have a huge time investment on your hand that you'll just end up figuring out later on that, okay, we don't have a medicine and you wasted that

Autumn (51m 14s): ton of time. Right. Yeah. Tell me, you could have been writing but I mean yeah, to give perspective, you and I meet every week for two hours plus we send each other a ton of emails through the week. Uh, we've gotten to the point where we can, you know, build stuff via email. But we also, we still have our time talking to each other every week. And of course we're doing that with a podcast, but that's if we added up those hours, the amount of time we spend talking to each other. Yeah, it's a very, this is a very serious relationship.

You've got to get along with your partner and also want to clarify like when we talk about, you know, work well together, sometimes that's everything from, you know, plotting character building. You have. Yeah, I'm a bit more of a pantser, but you know, to work together, you've got to be able to mold that into something that you collaborate with and build something together and figuring out how you're going to write, you know, it was one person writing first and the other one's adding things. Are you both, you know, swapping manuscripts back and forth so that you're building it as you go or one person has a character and one has the other character.

You've got to figure all that out for yourself. And if you can't, that's a pretty good indication that this might not work out.

Jesper (52m 27s): Yeah, I think that's true. And actually, I just thought of one more thing. Uh, I know we were running a bit long or does episode here, but uh, uh, but one thing not to forget, uh, maybe to finish off with here, but if you do want to collaborate with somebody else, you are going to have money between you. So you need to make sure that you create a contract that sets the terms and conditions for your cooperation. Because basically what you're doing is that you're running a company together and, and uh, a company cannot be run on the basis of trust.

Well it can, as long as you're good friends and everything is nice and dandy, but, uh, in a minute it's not nice and dandy. Yeah. But it just happens, you know, companies breaks up and people go into disagreements about this and that. And I just have to say that, you know, agreeing on the details about, for example, how to exit the contract, how to split money or whatever it be. It's a million times easier to agree on those details while you're good friends. Because once you're not anymore, it's going to be a nightmare to try to sort it out.

It is. Or even if it's not a friendship dissolving, but a health issue or a family issue or something,

Autumn (53m 39s): someone's got to step back cause they're not going to have the mental capacity, the mental time and energy to be able to say, you're right, let's figure this out for next three hours. So it gonna be like, no, I'm busy. This is why I'm leaving. So yes, figure that out beforehand. That way you know, who's, you know, holding the cart and hopefully whatever happens, you know, life does go on. You can't ever say it's going to be the same. And especially with, you know me is to your crazy partner so that's why we have a contract. But it's good because then we're always on the same page and we can just refer back to it and we know where we're going.

Jesper (54m 15s): Yeah. And the, and that, there was no reason to debate or discuss something because you did that upfront. So everything all is clear for both parties. There was no reason to end up in a misunderstandings and stuff like that. So it just keeps things nice and clean. And I know a bar, a contract sounds really boring, but you have to put it in place. I agree. So next Monday we have a topic which has come up over and over and over again. And that is about, uh, how to, to

Narrator (54m 44s): use dictation. If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going.

Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 57 – How to Write Compelling Heroes and Villains (with Sacha Black)

In episode 57 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Jesper is joined by the awesome and energetic Sacha Black.

Sacha is a fantasy author. She is an editor and the host of The Rebel Author Podcast.

Sacha has also written several guides and workbooks on how to write compelling heroes and villains.

So, we’re going to learn from her great insights on creating memorable characters.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (31s): Hello, I'm Jesper. This is episode 57 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and today autumn is not here, so I'm joined by an awesome guest and that is Sasha black. So Sacha is a fantasy author. She's an editor and the host of the rebel author podcast so Sacha has written several guides on and workbooks on how to write compelling, heroes and villains. So we're going to learn from her great insight on this topic here today.

But first, welcome to the amwritingfantasy she podcast Sacha

Sacha (1m 6s): thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Jesper (1m 9s): Yeah, it was very nice too. Very nice to talk to you. And the SF just sat there. I know that you also the host of the rebel author podcast, but what's that podcast about?

Sacha (1m 19s): I am. So the rebel author podcast is a motivational show at four creatives who like to break the rules or rebel against, you know, um, uh, conventions or just people who have the dry, sarcastic, wet who like, you know, the occasional naughty word. Uh, but it is am essentially about writing, publishing, marketing, um, or you know, all of those industry type topics.

And I tend to do interviews as well. Occasionally I do have a solo show, but yeah.

Jesper (1m 53s): Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's all, it's a specifically focused on just any creative outlet. Like, like I mean any Sean rough or writers or are you, are you focused on like certain elements within it or

Sacha (2m 6s): no, so it is for um, any writer of any genre. So I write obviously as you've met said I write nonfiction and young adult fantasy, kind of moving into adult fantasy soon. So I try to keep the topics wide. So you know about the craft as a whole rather than something very niche too. I don't know, historical fiction. And also occasionally, or I will be having anyway it topics that, uh, interviews that are more general to creative.

So it might be a better mindset or business, which could be any creative business. So yeah, I, I do try to keep it quite broad for all creatives.

Jesper (2m 47s): Okay. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because we sort of went the other way where by write I mean of course we, the topics that we are handling or talking about on this podcast, some of it is generic marketing and publishing and stuff like that, but at least from the writing perspective, we, we've sort of niche down and focused on fantasy writing so. So it was quite nice to hear that you also write fantasy.

Sacha (3m 12s): Yeah, well I actually think it's already important to be niche because I think you serve your audience much better when you do that. Um, and I suppose the thing that's overarching on my podcast rather than it being necessarily the niche topic, it's more the niche ethos and theme. So I always ask all of my guests to tell us about a time that they've been a rebel and you know, and yeah. So every week I will read out a listener who's a rebel, you know, in a little story that they sent in.

You know, I, I am sarcastic and witty, witty listeners to decide, but I hope I'm funny anyway. Um, and you know, but I will intersperse some naughty made up. So what are words or whatever. So yeah, it's kind of the feeling of the podcast that, um, is niche. I will not appeal to everybody because I have a potty mouth. I'm opinionated. Um, yeah, probably okay with that because I think that helps you find your audience essentially.

Jesper (4m 11s): No, I, yeah, I, I fully agree. I think it's, it's better to, to be a bit am, let's say unique and then some people will like it and people are, some people won't. And that's absolutely fine. Uh, I think that that's better than trying to appeal to everyone.

Sacha (4m 25s): Definitely. That's how you find your tribe.

Jesper (4m 28s): Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So how did you get into writing fantasy did, did you always know that you want it to write fantasy

Sacha (4m 34s): Oh, that is such a good question. Um, I, I don't think I am like the least self-aware person ever. I didn't really know that I wanted to write until I was in my mid twenties. I think if I had been more self-aware, I would have realized because all the signs were there, you know, I was that kid who'd prefer to read in the library at lunch rather than come and play with other people, you know, things like this. But, um, in terms of fantasy specifically I as a teenager, I read a lot of fantasy.

I also interested in, you read a lot of crime and a lot of Raymond's. So I don't think I necessarily knew that that's what I wanted to write until I really got into writing. And I, and a lot of my fears around writing came from not knowing what, you know, if I was going to make some kind of accuracy era. So if you ride fun to see, you can make a lot of it up. So I did that, you know, um, ended up, uh, creating our fantasy world and it's actually just the first character that came to me.

So my first book has been with me since I was like nine years old. Um, I always, yeah, I always knew this character, so I'm not going to stick with fantasy forever. Um, I definitely have a contemporary young adult book that I'm about to work on this year that has, I guess, hints of magical realism in it, but it is predominantly set in the real world. So no, I don't, I read a lot of friends, see now, but I also read a lot of contemporary, I read a lot of nonfiction, so I don't know, I just like it. So there is no rhyme or reason behind it particularly?

Jesper (6m 19s): No. All right. Now that you'd call the self aware and, and I didn't know that I was that unselfaware but apparently I am because it wasn't until I was like, uh, what, like 38 or something that I figured out that I wanted to write so apparently I'm less overwhelmed.

Sacha (6m 35s): Well, you know, lots of us are to hold when we grow up to get a proper job. And you know, uh, I thought a proper job meant going to university and being on one of these really super dull, uh, management, fast track graduate, um, things, you know, so it, yeah, it took me a while to realize that I really hated the corporate world.

Jesper (6m 57s): Right. But one thing I did to find out by, uh, you know, snooping around on the internet was that you quite like conspiracy theories. So I thought that was quite fun. So I wanted to ask you if you have like a favorite conspiracy

Sacha (7m 10s): am Oh, it's so, that's so hard. So mean of you to ask me that. Um, I do, I do like them because for two reasons. One, um, I derive a lot of inspiration from them. You know, they are quite dystopian when you look at them. Um, and I love dystopian stories. I definitely will be writing a dystopian series at some point, but you can also take elements of fantasy from them. So, you know, like flatter the for example, is a great, um, great example of a conspiracy that's wildly popular at the moment.

And there are so many elements to that, you know, things like giants and whether the gods were actually aliens, you know, the, all of these things actually played really well into fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. So that is why I love them. And so I, I, you know, a hollow earth is another one. Hollow moon. Um, the, yeah, the firmament and having a dome over the F there are just millions that I will read about and we'll, um, take elements of, uh, to put into my stories.

The other reason I like them, uh, it relates to villains. Um, and I always think one of the good markers of a villain is when they're crazy or they're, um, you know, there, uh, what's the word? Like whatever they're trying to so like president snow once the hunger games in the hunger games, he wants the reality TV show when we are so convincing that they can get you to believe in their crazy for just a second. I always think that's a really good Mark of a villain. And I think that some of these conspiracy theories, when you look at some of the, you know, really, um, ardent supporters and some of their arguments, you can for a split second or two actually really invest in them and believe in them.

And I think that when, when it's that convincing, you can learn things from that for your fiction.

Jesper (9m 1s): Yeah. That is funny because that's exactly why I like conspiracy theories as well because there's so much inspiration in some of it. It's like, well, some of it is like really out there, you know, but, but it's still that there's a lot of good ideas that you can use for storytelling in there. And, uh, I quite like the one where they are talking about that, you know, that the matrix that we actually living in a matrix like thing. So the whole thing in the entire world is just simulation though.

Sacha (9m 27s): Yeah. But there are, do you know, they're all scientific books on the universe as a hologram that, you know, there are like genuinely traditionally published books. Um, I had one a few years ago and I can't remember the exact name, but it was something like the universe is a hologram anyway. Fascinating. And that is also what I lost. That some of these things really do venture into the science of it and that's when it becomes extremely hard to ignore. And you know, you do find yourself questioning, well, have I been lied to? What is the government really, you know, all of these things.

But yeah, I think that having an open mind, um, and investigating these things, be it conspiracy theories, all science or you know, some detailed, um, Avenue as a writer is really important because we do filter all those are things that we put into our brain back out into our fiction. And I just think it gives us more depth to our stories.

Jesper (10m 22s): Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And, and now I can't remember which one it was, which of course then makes it a bad example to bring up. But, but I did listen to a podcast like a couple of months ago where they were talking about numbers and how if you add this to this all, and there was something about the moon as well, the actual size of the moon and am something like that. And everything just keeps adding up to the same numbers or something. It was insane listening too. But, uh, but anyway, that's, that's a rabbit hole that we can get down another into another day. But, uh, we wanted to talk a bit about compelling, heroes and villains today.

So I don't know, maybe, maybe I could just start out by asking you what did this, did you think makes for a compelling hero and villain some overhaul maybe.

Sacha (11m 7s): Yeah. So, um, I, so a villain, interestingly, a lot of the same things cross saver and, uh, between what makes a good hero and what makes a good villain. But what often happens is that writers at focus all their attention on their hero because obviously the hero is the person who the story is being told via and therefore they have the most page time.

But the mistake that you're making there is that all stories are about change. Be it the emotional arc that a hero goes on, the emotional change, the obstacles that a hero must feet in order to win or get to the end of the book. And what drives change is conflict because all of us are creatures of habit will, will not change unless we're forced to too.

So yeah. And, and that is how you get the change is through conflict and what's what drives the conflict and novel that's your villain. So I always say that a villain is actually more important than the hero because they are at the source of, um, changing the heroes, which is what the story is about essentially. So the first thing I always think that's important is to get that straight in your head and to value your villain as much as you value your hero.

Um, in terms of what makes a good villain, I think there's a probably four or five things. So the first one is values. It's really, really important. Just like your hero will have values, they might value strength or loyalty or doing good or whatever. It's also important that your villain has a value and you can enact those in a couple of different ways. So you could have a positive value, like loyalty that your villain INAX in a bad way.

So for example, uh, Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter is an excellent example of this. Anybody who portrays his loyalty, they're gonna die. So that is an example of and acting a positive trait in a bad way. And then of course, you could have a negative value, like revenge, for example. Um, and just moving on from that, another really important factor in your villains is to have a positive trait. So for example, if you have a villain who is just a homicidal maniac who just wants to end the world, um, it's not very believable because apart from people who, you know, might have genuine, um, Mike, well anyway, having a complete psychopath as a villain in a crime book might be realistic, but that's usually because they're not really on the page very much.

Excuse me. They tend to, uh, appear at the end. Or if there's some, obviously might have a jewel point of view, but for the most part then on the page, and we'll get back to the point. So having a positive trait creates a second layer of depth to the character. Most of us aren't inherently evil and that goes for villains as well. They might have a warped sense of justice or a warped sense of equality or a warp sense of, you know what's right and wrong is, but they don't believe they are bad.

They believe they are doing the right thing. It's just that society or your hero doesn't. So having a positive trait is really important to make them believable. It gives them a sense of humanity and you can enact that in a million different ways. Be it showing kindness to somebody or even if it's a henchman, having a pet is quite often when that happens. Um, it could also be that, that you turn one of their negative traits into a positive temporarily.

So that is a trick that I quite like to use. Um, another last, I'll try and whip through these. Appreciate I'm going on. But, um, so, so the other one would be to have a really solid motive and a reason why. So this is often lacking. I find in manuscripts that I am do developmental edits on the, they don't think through the why a villain is doing something. People like, when we look at our psychology, we all do things for a reason.

Our childhood, our teenage years, you know, our most influential years shape our brain chemistry, like quite literally shapes our brain chemistry. And if you've had a wound in your past, often we talk about heroes and wounds and the thing that gives them their flow while your villain also has a wound in their past. And whilst you don't necessarily need to put it on the page because your villains isn't your protagonist, you do need to think about that because it will drive their behavior.

You know, let's say they lost family in a boating accident. I'm just talking about this on the hoof now. But perhaps they then have that would give them a wound and they might then want to seek revenge on, on, on the boating company. But a hero might choose instead to enact that wound in a positive way. So they might start up a charity for people of drowning victims or whatever, you know. So it's, it's looking at how you can incorporate that wound and give your villain a reason for why he's behaving and in that particular way.

And um, you know, doing the bad things that he's doing lost to make them unbeatable. Um, too often we give our heroes and easy ride and we don't, um, make things difficult enough. So one way to stop that is to make a really unbeatable villain for like 85% of your novel. Make them an expert in something, make them better than the hero at something. Um, because the harder it is for your hero to the win, the more invested your readers will be.

And last, but by no means least give them a really strong sense of integrity, which is actually a really positive trait to have. But I will tell you the reason why it's so important for a Villa. When you have integrity, you do what you're, say, what you say you're going to do, even if it means doing something bad. And that makes a villain, particularly when they do do bad things because they said they're going to do them, it makes them frightening. You know, if they are like, you know, I'm gonna, if you don't do X, I will kidnap your child.

And then they came back. The child that is terrifying and also makes them very believable. So yeah, those would be my top.

Jesper (18m 1s): Yeah. No, but, but I think that there are some really, really, really good points in down and especially about the reason for being evil because that's also something I always keep saying. Uh, automotive and I actually writing a book about creating characters and also plotting at the moment and in the character section part of it, we are also saying in data, everybody is a hero of their own story, right? So, so they're, they're, the villain will also believe that what he's doing is for the greater good.

Uh, so, so I fully agree with what you're saying that you need a good reason for, for them be doing what they're doing. And unfortunate lab also seemed like in mainstream, uh, what does he call pain or what does he call the, you know, the adversary and one of the superhero things where it was something to do with a doll or some stupid stuff like that, you know, when, when do you almost felt like they were making up a reason just to have one and for him being evil. Right. And that that doesn't work. Yeah. I think maybe too many writers also too concerned about the villain becoming, let's say, too likable.

Uh, and therefore they make him like just, just like super evil without any reason for being evil. But I would almost go the other way and say the more likable or at least understandable, you can make the villain the better. The villains.

Sacha (19m 23s): Absolutely. And you only have to look at the rise in popularity of anti heroes to see how true that is. Um, you know, uh, villains excuse me. Villains often, none of us would want to admit this, but sometimes they do the, they do the hard thing and they do the controversial thing. And sometimes we might, there might be parts of us that agree with them and that's particularly what auntie heroes do. They do the naughty things that we all wish we could do, but wait, call your boss in the eye with a fork is technically illegal.

Jesper (19m 56s): Yeah. But that, that's absolutely through. Uh, but, but also, you know, sometimes the villains side just, I don't know, maybe it's just me, but, uh, in, in star Wars for example, I like Veda the most. You know, he's just so cool. Uh, but of course he's not the good guy, but, uh, but it is, so sometimes it's just the am, the villains who are, who are really, really strong characters. And I think it's important to have strong villains because without it, as you say as well, then you have no real conflict and no driver behind.

And then the story.

Sacha (20m 29s): Exactly, exactly. I think the Mark of a good story, well there are many marks of good stories, but one of my most favored marks of a good story is a villain who will suck me in. Um, and you know, they'll make me like him and then just as I'm about to tip over into, Oh, I love this, they'll go and do some things so unbelievably, terribly horrible that I'm like, ah, later you kill me. Because now I just call it like the villain or whatever. You know, it's that roller coaster of innovations that I think comes from a good villain.

Jesper (21m 2s): Yeah, absolutely. But do you think it's also important to show chains in the villain or do you just go with like, well, the willingness to same.

Sacha (21m 13s): So you know, there are lots of different types of villain arcs as well. I think what we really interesting villains go on their own, um, that their own journey. So you can have a character who starts out nice, for example, that this often happens in like high school, um, uh, stories. You'll have two friends and one will become, um, you know, uh, I was going to say no to that, but one will become the cause. She gets jealous, but she starts out nice and then she declines on her own journey into becoming the Antonio.

I mean, to be honest, in that kind of story, it's more of an antagonist than a, than a villain. But they will descend. Um, and it's only as they descend that if you look at a graph, they are descending downwards, the heroes starts to rise upwards and it's at that point of crossing that the hero overcomes their floor in order to defeat the villain. And the villain falls into that point of insanity where there's no, no return for them. But you also have other types of villains.

So a redemption arc is, I just love a redemption arc. So a typical thing, and obviously as I've said, we'll go downwards. They'll start, you know, maybe bad, but they'll decline rapidly into the dark pits, off, you know, um, uh, push the red button of nuclear explosion. Um, but a redemption arc is when they might start bad, but actually they end up doing the right thing or they, they redeem themselves for whatever it is they've done. A good example of that, excuse me, in relatively recent TV series was once upon a time, I think it was am and the evil queen in a snow white and the seven drawers, so she's called Regina in this TV show.

She has a fantastic redemption arc, even the seven series. So, um, I would highly recommend that TV series if you want to see a recent example of a redemption arc that I loved. Um, yeah,

Jesper (23m 20s): yeah, yeah. But I think it is important to, to think about the villains as a character rather than just a mechanism to, to throw some stuff in the face of the hero all the time. Right. Because that needs to be some depth to, to the, to the villainous. Well of course, I, I do think sometimes when we're dealing with fantasy, if you're, if you're a villain is like, uh, uh, the dark Lord or something, you know, like, uh, like in a lot of the rings or whatever, right? Then it can be a bit difficult to try to, to think about how do I show a real change in Salona something, right?

I mean, but, but, but I mean, I think it applies both ways. Dis about a S before we talked about the not shoe Horning in the reason for the villain to be evil, but at the same time, I think it applies the other way around us. Well, sometimes don't shoe horn in a change because you think that's a good idea. It's, it all depends on, yeah,

Sacha (24m 15s): absolutely. And we all know I'm a rebel so you can, you can break any writing rule that you want as long as you're creating believable characters and you have readers that like your stories. Um, you know, but I, I, one of the things that I think is important, um, although again, lots of writers will break this and still create good stories, but allowing your villain, so your hero represents the theme in your book. Okay. So you'll fill in, should resent the, I'll put my teeth back in, should represent the anti theme.

So a good example of this, again, I will go back to the hunger games. Hopefully everybody has seen or read the hunger games, but Katniss represents sacrifice even on the, in the first chapter. She um, her sister gets cool to go into this really dangerous life threatening TV reality show and she sacrifices herself in order to protect her sister. Everything she does in the novel is about sacrifice and sacrificing herself for the greater good of others and in order to get what you want, but president snow sacrifices of the people for his benefit.

So he is a direct reversal of the the of the book's theme. And he will am. Yes. Okay. One of his values, his heel, any kill people for a purpose, but you can be damn sure that he will kill somebody if he, if it's going to benefit him. Um, so yeah, I really think that's another important aspect to make sure you, you look at in preparing your villain and Damon.

Jesper (25m 59s): Yeah, exactly. So, so speaking of that, uh, of what, what you just said there, how much and how, and how much detail do you advise to, to go into character planning before you start writing? How much of this do you set up in advance and how much do you sort of figured out along the way? I think

Sacha (26m 16s): that, Hm, I think that is individual to each writer. Um, I, I love, I love talking about process and talking to other writers about what they do. Um, their planner Ponsot writing into the dark, etc. Um, but I don't think that is one right answer. At the end of the day, if you are finishing books, then the process works for you. If you're not finishing books, then try something else and experiment. Um, some people like to let their characters play out on the page and then they're happy to do revisions.

That's fine. Some people like to go into a lot of depth planning, um, before they start. I think, um, even if you don't write it down and you don't plan it, knowing your villains am floor and positive traits and their wound in the past is helpful before you start because it can help you shape your scenes and the conversations and it will enable you to know both what you're hearing needs to be bad and good at and how eventually they'll defeat them.

But ultimately, I, you know, I hate dictating to people how they should and shouldn't do their planning. Um, cause I just think there are as many different processes as there are writers out there and you have to find an experiment to see what works for you.

Jesper (27m 35s): Yup. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I think also the dose pros and cons to all of it. Uh, you know, the, the modern, you can plan out in advance the more time you're going to save in editing. But if you feel like planning out in advance is, is killing your creativity, then maybe it's better to just spend more time editing. So it's to his own.

Sacha (27m 55s): Yeah, absolutely. And also don't be afraid to change your mind. So like I always sometimes forget that I have permission to change my mind on things. So if anybody's listening, you have permission to experiment. Um, but yeah, so I have written books that are heavily planned and also not planned at all. And sometimes different books and different projects require different methods. So that's okay. If you need to change up your method, you have permission.

Jesper (28m 22s): Okay. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, but, but, uh, in terms of heroes versus villains here, are there like any fundamental things that you think is really important for writers to be aware of in terms of differences between the two where we spent quite, uh, quite some time here at the moment talking about villains and how to make them great. You did also touch upon upon the heroes a bit in the beginning, but is there any like fundamental things that are really important or do you think the same sort of characteristics

Sacha (28m 51s): kind off but in opposite way. So when we talked about a villain, we said that, um, they need a positive trait in amongst their negative ones, but for a heroes they need a negative trait in amongst their positive ones. So nobody likes the perfect person and nobody really likes the geek at school who always has their hand up and always get things right. You know, it makes us feel bad, you know?

Um, yeah, nobody likes a perfect Terry because actually it's boring. There's no trials and tribulations and it's unrelatable. One of the things that we read is love the most is to be able to relate to the heroes and in particular their emotional journey because that really is at the heart of stories is, is the emotion. And, um, we're perfect as humans and therefore your heroes should not be passive. They should make mistakes. They should see the wrong thing. They should upset people.

Ultimately though they obviously need to be overwhelmingly good, um, in order to, to be the hair or not. If you have an antihero, um, obviously they are, you know, a good 50, 50 balance of good and evil. Um, the other thing that I think is really important to concentrate with, um, the hero is something that I talk about in my book. 10 steps to heroes how to craft a kickass protagonist. Um, and that's the hero lens so often.

Well, and it will depend slightly on the point of view that you're writing in but broadly speaking, even if you're in an omniscient, um, you know, looking over the heads of all of the characters type and point of view, your story will be told through the eyes of either a character, your protagonists, or another character or through a series of different characters. And the important thing to remember is that that is all your reader has.

Okay. So you, for example, I might see turquoise as more greeny blue than bluey green, but other people might see it more as bluey green. So each of us has this unique way of looking at the world. And the hero lens is essentially a funnel through which you'll read a sees the story and it is through the eyes of your heroes. And the way that you can Croft that lens is through actions, thoughts, and feelings and dialogue.

Now, if you're an exact, so to put this into practice as and as an example, if you have a really stuffy, formal, pompous sort of academic as a character, you need to think how that personality would be reflected across dialogue, across thoughts, feelings, and action. Because the way that academic would behave is very different to a gang member, for example. So instead of using, and you can get really granular with this, but this is how you create really good characterization and how you create the sensation of individuality and uniqueness for your heroes that your reader will fall in.

Love it. So let's go nitty gritty and talk. Look at sort of a sentence level thing a academic might say. Instead of saying, I thought either your offer, they could say, I've been contemplating your author. So instead of using a basic word like think or thinking, they might say contemplating or pondering and they might say, I've come to the conclusion that it must be a node. Rather than saying, I've been thinking about your offer and it's a no, you know, you have to look at how you can take those personality traits and filter them down through thoughts, through dialogue.

I mean that was a dialogue example, but even in the description, you know, somebody who is a angry character, we'll use shorter, sharper sentences and shorter words. Often things like automatic PSA, they might talk about the banging footsteps of a soldier, for example, where somebody who is much more um, thoughtful might use, my brain's gone completely blank now, but you see where I'm going with this.

Jesper (33m 14s): Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think also what, what a character notices is also different depending on personality. So one type of person who will notice something else in a room that then another type of personality will, right? I mean, some personalities will enter a room and the first thing they'll look for, okay, that this is me. So when I enter a room, I look for kitchen, where's the toilets, where, where are the exits? So I need to know where everything is. Right? But somebody else might enter a room and think, Oh, those look like interesting people over there.

I better go over there and talk to them. Right. And that's not me.

Sacha (33m 48s): Definitely I of those details that that characterization comes from. Um, and you know, the reflection on how those things make them feel. So I think in the book there's an example about, um, two different characters are more depressed character and an angry character looking at a parade and the differences, um, it's the same event, but they're looking at it through very different eyes. So they are noticing different details and yeah. So it's one of my most favorite things to do in in when I'm writing is to think about the details that one character we'll see over another.

Jesper (34m 23s): Yeah, absolutely. One thing I was thinking about while you were saying that, and I don't know what, what your thoughts about this, but the sentence level for me that that sounds like something that you should probably spend most of your time on, eh, let's say correcting or updating when you're doing your editing, because I think if you get bucked down and all of that during your first drafty, yeah, you might spend quite a lot of time thinking about the right words that this character will use and at the end of the day you're going to edit the, some of it out anyway or whatnot. So I don't know what you think about that.

Do you go about it right away or do you sort of save some of that, those details for the editing?

Sacha (35m 0s): I think it depends. Like I said earlier, some people will write an extremely clean first draft and that's, that's because they cycle through. So they might read it, they might write your chapter, read a chapter, read an editor chapter, write the next chapter, read it. At the end of the day, if you are finishing books, it doesn't matter how you're doing it. Um, I tend to use a mixture. I'm a bit of a burst writer so I will, but I'm changing that. I am trying to write consistently instead of, you know, writing 20 K in a week and then not writing for me personally, I do a bit of a mixture.

Sometimes I will take forever to, you know, write a single sentence and then other times I will just form it an entire scene out and I'll revise it later. And I think it just depends on how I'm feeling and what the moment calls for. But I definitely, um, I, I wouldn't say I write flowery, but I definitely love description and I love, um, obsessing about the sentence level stuff. So I probably spend a reasonable amount of time doing that in revisions or, or if I'm doing it at this at the time.

But it depends on the project. It depends on the characters. Some characters are so fully formed when they appear on the page that you don't need to revise them because their voice is so crystal clear. Um, the characters take longer to, um, to, to develop. So for example, one of my characters in my, um, uh, young adult fantasy novel, um, was, has been there since, but one, I'm now on book three, but, um, they were much blander I think in book one and by book three, they now this like total diva, snarky genius diva.

And, um, so they've really come into their room and perhaps I could have done more planning beforehand to ensure that this character was the same from the start. But I, I like it because it feel like this character has come into their road. So are you finishing books? That's the, that's the real important question. If your face you booked, it doesn't matter how you get there.

Jesper (37m 9s): Yeah, absolutely. That's so true. Um, but I was also thinking to ask you, um, maybe, maybe sort of as, as a rounding off, I don't know, but, uh, but because we have so many streaming services nowadays, you have so many movies that is easily available to everybody. What, what do you think about taking inspiration from characters in in? It could also be another books, but, but maybe from movies or TV shows or whatever, and using that as inspiration for your own characters. Do you think that's a good idea or it doesn't it matter or,

Sacha (37m 41s): yeah, absolutely. I get, get any inspiration you can from anywhere, be it, you know, going and visiting museums, you know, climbing into abandoned buildings. Not that I've done that any, any which way you can. And I think it's, I think we'd be naive to say that the stories that we read or the TV shows that we watch don't influence the us. I don't think we can avoid that. You know, arguably you could say that every romance story that has ever been written is a rip off of Romeo and Juliet.

Um, as long as you're not doing a carbon copy of a character, which frankly, I don't believe that you could because exactly. Each writer's voice is different. But if you are taking elements of a story, um, or elements of a world-building or elements of whatever, then, you know, so what every vampire story ever or has vampires in it, does that mean every race of vampires is saying, does that mean they all become a vampire in the same way?

You know? Yeah. I don't think that all unique stories really, I think, you know, with 8 million books or whatever it is on Amazon, I think it's very hard to have something that is truly original. So yeah, don't be afraid, just, just don't write carbon copies of because obviously then that is plagiarism and illegal.

Jesper (39m 4s): Yeah. But, but yeah, uh, I mean, I fully agree. I mean, unless you actually sitting there and copying exactly the same thing, then I fully agree that it's not possible to, to copy and not even a story. I mean, sometimes I call him, uh, come across, uh, writers who email me or some of them. I've also received some tweets once in a while where people asking or that, you know, what about when I share my story ideas and people would steal it. And I always keep saying the same thing. Like nobody can steal your idea. I mean, it doesn't matter that you're telling people if, if talking told somebody, this is what I'm, I'm thinking about, I want to write for a lot of the rings.

And you sat down and wrote the Lord of the rings while he was doing it in parallel, the two stories would be completely different even though you started out from the same idea. Yeah,

Sacha (39m 47s): absolutely. And the other thing is like, and I, I mean this with no disrespect to any creative, but nobody else cares. You know, we all, as creatives, we all have our own ideas that we are deeply passionate about and they are ours. And yes, there might be similarities and other stories, but nobody wants to write somebody else's story. They want to write their own story. So it is usually highly unlikely that somebody will steal your idea or whatever.

Yes, they might take elements or parts of your story, but nobody can write like you. Nobody has your voice because nobody grew up under the same circumstances. Nobody has the same lens, see what I did, their hair, you have and therefore they cannot possibly write to the same story as you.

Jesper (40m 40s): No, absolutely true. That's it's a ton of good advice. You're Sacha is there anything that you have not mentioned that you feel is important for the listener to know?

Sacha (40m 48s): Am just keep writing and keep practicing. And one thing that I really like to do is write flash, flash fiction. Um, I think it's a really good, uh, so flash fiction for anybody that doesn't know is a very, very micro short story could be anything from two lines of dialogue up to sort of thousand word character sketches. But if you're ever unsure about how a character would act or behave, I always like to put them in strange situations or you know, give them an emotion to feel or to react to you and just write a very short piece.

And I think that helps and stops people from making mistakes in their manuscripts. And it is also then free that you can then give to your readers or whatever. So yeah, just, just experiment.

Jesper (41m 39s): Mm, cool. So where can people find more, uh, more about you and what you do? Sacha if they want to check stuff out,

Sacha (41m 47s): but so, um, my name is, uh, obviously Sasha black, but it's Sacha with a C so, S a C H, a M and my website is Sacha black.co dot. UK. You can find out more about my books. I have a blog that you can find out more about like podcast there. The podcast is on all podcasting app category jobbies and it's called the rebel author podcast am if you would like to view my books, I'm on, I'm white, so I am anywhere that you can, you can buy a book.

You can find my books and, and last, but by no means least I am on Twitter and Facebook and all of those things. Um, but I most frequently on Instagram, which is at Sacha, black author and one last thing. Um, I do have a Facebook group where we do weekly accountability posts. We do fast friction writing Wednesday challenges, and it's just generally a really nice support group. And that is called 13 steps to Eagle. Doesn't sound nice, does it? But it is.

Sorry man.

Jesper (42m 49s): That's excellent. And uh, I, if you sent me some link Sasha, then I'll add it to the show notes so people can find it straight through there as well. All right. Thanks a lot for joining us today. So next Monday autumn, we'll be back and we're gonna dive deep into the topic of how to find other authors to collaborate with.

Narrator (43m 16s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 56 – Six Revenue Streams for Authors

Writing a book is fantastic!

But did you know that there are ways of leveraging your skills as a writer and the time you've put into creating a book to create more revenue streams?

In this episode, Autumn and Jesper go over the pros and stumbling blocks to six additional revenue streams that writers can utilize to expand their author careers and grow their success.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt. Hello, I'm Jesper and I'm Autumn.

This is episode 56 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and quite often the advice to authors is that you should be

Jesper (44s): diversifying your revenue streams and that might sound like good businesses wise, but what does it actually mean and what other revenue streams is available to you. So that's what we're going to cover today. I think this is going to be quite interesting. Autumn yeah, I think we're going to get into the nitty gritty, which I love. I love questioning these, these overarching rules that you're here and you're like, that sounds great.

Autumn (1m 8s): I want to do that. How do I do that? I then we're going to get into the what you could possibly do. Yay. Yeah. Uh, we have a few options. Should we call it prepared each of us. So we'll get into that a bit later here. That's right. So I had this thing where I came home today and I had to share with you that, um, I know you don't eat meat and so this is not going to be attractive to you, but I walked into the apartment and it smelled like maple glazed bacon as like woo.

And so other people who do eat meat are going to be like, Oh my God, this is not the way to come home to record a podcast and you're hit in the face with this warm aroma of bacon. It's just wrong. But, um, Adam likes to, my husband likes to am where are we? We're foodies, so we like to make food and he recently got into am finding out that you can make your own bacon. So, um, is, is WIC with made with local locally grown meat locally growing hogs?

Am so it was all the local produced with a maple espresso glaze. Um, yeah, that was, let me try that. Yeah, he's done it like once or twice before, but it's always been out. You know, he'll do it over a fire or a roast or a smoker or something to finish it off. But since we're an apartment now and it's now December and it snowed, we had 30 inches of snow and it's a little cold. I think the high on Thursday this week is 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

So that's really, it's below freezing. Um, you know, he decided to try it in our, our apartment, which happens to have a range. So it's, yeah, it's not quite the same, but at least it is fire. It's not electric stove. Um, and yeah, I came home to the luscious aroma of bacon and I've told you before, one of my favorite podcasts is gastropod, which is all about food. And so I was like, wow, this is my focus today is going to be on bacon.

Sorry. Nice. Well,

Jesper (3m 23s): I mean if he's, he's used to cooking outside, so I guess you can't blame him too much. He doesn't

Autumn (3m 28s): stand what, what inside inside kitchen look works, how it works. I guess I should just be happy. He didn't decide to roast coffee cause he has done that. He wrote his own coffee beans and that is one of the smokiest processes I have ever stumbled across. And that is not something you want to do in an apartment unless you want the fire alarm to go off. So just anyone else at home do that outside. So how, how's your week going?

Jesper (3m 59s): Quite good. Um, early in the week we, uh, uh, we went with my oldest son because he was gonna graduate to a yellow belt in karate, uh, this past week. Okay.

Autumn (4m 11s): So how, yeah, so we went there to, to see it and um,

Jesper (4m 17s): I'm not quite sure why, but we actually weren't allowed to. What's the actual year? I don't know if you call a test, but you know, the actual graduation or you know, they did test that. They notice stuff that they need to know and we went actually not allowed to watch that. So we just have to sit outside in the common room waiting while they are doing, I don't know why we were not allowed to watch it, but there was a bit weird, you know, we were looking forward to go down and see it and we brought his younger brothers, well we sat out there for an hour or something and the younger brother was starting to get really bored.

Autumn (4m 48s): Hi Beth.

Jesper (4m 51s): But uh, but it all went, it went well in the end. Uh, so, uh, apparently during his testing, um, they figured out that he was too skilled for the yellow billed, so they actually allowed him to skip the yellow and go straight to orange. So

Autumn (5m 7s): that was pretty much, that's actually really cool. So it went well even if it's a secret right, that you couldn't witness. Exactly.

Jesper (5m 16s): Yeah. And he was very proud of course. And uh, it was, it was really nice to see him see him that happy. So, so that was, I think that was awesome.

Autumn (5m 25s): Oh, it sounded like I said, I live vicariously through you as a parent. So I think that is just, that would be, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Just imagining like, Oh my gosh, this is something I produced that is doing so well. I don't know how that happened, so that's fantastic. You need to allow your doctor to start karate training or something. Um, as I'd like to joke, I have got to record him sometime to share with everyone the sound my dog makes because as the breeder had said, when had her first litter of carne terrier puppies, are they supposed to sound this way?

They sound sort of like, I call him a vampire dog and they don't grow. They don't bark. They, it's, it's just kind of seeding. I'm going to possibly eat. You in suck your blood, so I've got to get that for you someday.

Jesper (6m 13s): Oh yeah, that would be pretty cool. We can put it into an audio book one day about with a vampire Kip that in every time. Great. Oh, we go on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast so I was thinking it worth mentioning that the sum of our patrons are probably coming up on getting access to the what's in a name cost for free.

That's right. Yeah. Because after six months of support on Patrion, you actually get free access to this course, which is a in part about creating languages and names for your fantasy characters. So I think that will probably be some patron supporters who are getting close to, to get that access for free. So, you know, don't, don't forget the patron supporters to keep an eye on that and email us when your time is up so that we can, uh, get you into that course for free.

And it's a useful Yana. But I was just about to say that I would also think that some of them might not be too far off for getting a free amwritingfantasy t-shirt as well.

Autumn (7m 26s): I think so I've been, yeah, that's, yeah, that's the one year, isn't it? And there's a few people who have been there, so yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be, yeah. It's, we have so many different, you know, people subscribe to different tiers and coming at different times that that's why we ask them to keep track. But they are there. So yeah, this is a great reminder to go in and check and see what day you joined and check your tier level and let us know if we owe you something because that's why that's there. We're excited to give it to you and if you happen to send a picture, if you get a tee shirt, we'd be thrilled.

That's fun to see people wearing am. Yeah, I love seeing people

Jesper (8m 4s): right before when we were recording a YouTube videos, I usually a tee shirt as well. But uh, nowadays on a podcast, I don't think quite it matters. I'm in pajamas. Really makes no difference.

Autumn (8m 21s): No. Considering how late it is for you. I mean it's only a mid-afternoon for me on the East coast of the States, but for you all the way over there in Denmark. Yeah, it's am evening. So you could be wearing our pajamas and slippers and I wouldn't know.

Jesper (8m 34s): No. Yeah, it's nine in the evening right now for me. So, uh, yeah. Um, yeah, but I also wanted to mention just that for everyone else who are not yet supporting us on Patrion, I would encourage, encourage you to at least click the link in the show notes and check out all the rewards that we are offering for supporters because you know, as for as little as a dollar a month you can get in there. And I have to say that the money we can collect from patron is what will keep this podcast going long term.

And we are certainly not there yet at this point in time actually justifies the time that we're spending on these episodes. So if you add just $1 a month to the pot will then we won't end up in a situation where at some point in the future autumn and I have to start asking ourselves if our time is better spent on writing. So I'll get off my soapbox there, but it's just that, you know, $1 might not sound like much, but it actually does make a difference if enough, if, if enough people, so yeah, that's, that's worth mentioning.

Autumn (9m 42s): Absolutely. And it's funny that you mentioned it because one of the comments I had really liked that had just come in is because I still sharing on Patrion, um, going really in depth into the seven stages of story structure and really pulling out like which one each one means and how to make it all link up to you can create a better plot. And am I know Zaid was like, you know, this is gold. Thank you. And the entire first act of my book is going to need a rewrite even though I'm like, no, wait until you're done writing before you, you do that.

But, um, you know, we got into the cause and effect and the idea of this mini story that should help serve as an introduction. So it's just, it's great to be able to help someone else out and then also to get the feedback and be able to, you know, answer questions specifically to make sure things are going for well for how he's writing and what he needs. So again, that's all on, on. So it was really, it's so great to be able to connect with, um, you know, other members and other writers that way and help each other and guide them.

So I know their stories are growing well too.

Jesper (10m 57s): All right. I feel like we raced through that. Uh, so, uh, we already have to, today's a topic now, um, with multiple streams of income. And, uh, I guess the best place to start is just defining a bit about what does it mean when we're talking about multiple streams of income and on, why are we talking about that? But do you want to kick us off with that? I'll just throw it on me. I thought that was the easiest.

Autumn (11m 29s): I don't never knew you to Slack on anything. I'm shocked. So, but I will take up the challenge. It's a multiple streams of income. I mean this is not having multiple books. Technically. Maybe if you have different genres you might want to consider it. But this is like, it's almost like having different jobs. So you have books and you also maybe have your day job and then you have maybe spouse's job, you have different areas, like big spheres of areas that provides some sort of income, some money.

So that way if suddenly all ebook sales dried up, you still have your own income or you know, you still, you're selling cross stitching or something, something totally related or unrelated, you know, you could be doing literary cross-stitch. So those are ways of providing income to your family, into your business, whatever that may be. So that's all we're going to look at today. When we say multiple streams of income, you have different pots that you're going to be getting money into. And so there are different, they might overlap in some areas, but it's not as easy as saying, you know, I writing nonfiction and fantasy it's, you know, there's still books, so we want to look at side maybe the realm, the pot of books.

Yeah. And, uh,

Jesper (12m 45s): basically the idea is sort of, um, well one thing that is not very pleasant to think about is that basically like having a day job, right? So you have one company paying you income or your salary in the case if a day job and something happens and they have light, they lay off hundreds of people and you're one of them and all of a sudden you have no income. I mean, as some author you're selling books. And of course I re very, very much doubt that Amazon is ever going to go bust.

But uh, but they could decide on, in Amazon that way, why are we paying authors a am this much royalty. Let's just say that from now on, we pay authors 50% royalty. And if you are earning all of your money from Amazon or doesn't matter, it could also be Cobra or whatever, one of the other, what is it called? Like online retailers. Um, then you're going to take it very serious hit, you know, and if you're not prepared for that, then that will hurt just as much as it hurts getting laid off from a day job.

But usually when you get laid off for a day job, and I do realize that probably here in or wind Denmark, we have a bit a bit better protection systems in place in the U S but at least over here, if you get laid off, you will, you'll get several months of pay, uh, to make sure that you have some time to find a new job. But if Amazon tomorrow and they could decide to cut your royalties in half, they will just do so when there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. So the idea would, multiple streams of income is not two, it's really not to find out, okay, so how can I earn as much as from selling books on something else?

But it's more an idea of creating a lot of small streams that together gives you a, you know, a lot of revenue flowing in from different places that in total, uh, earns you enough money. Um, but it's not that you have to come up with one thing. So that's not what we're talking about here. Trying to find one stream of income that will earn you as much money as selling books. That's not the point, but it's more like trying to what are some smaller avenues here and dad, you could potentially think about adding to your, to the things that you are doing two and a bit more money from different places.

So about the in in total between all of the things that you're doing, you get a healthy income and you are less dependent on one source. So, so that's the idea behind all of the stuff that we're going to talk about here. I hope that wasn't absolutely,

Autumn (15m 17s): no, no, that was perfect and it was a good, yeah, good intro to why you want to do this. Because you know, you, we don't control Amazon. We don't control these big sellers. You could, they could cut revenue they could kick you off if they consider that you violated something. So there are many reasons that you know, it's why you and I are both. Um, we're not just on KDP select but not just selling on Amazon. We are both wide because again, it's spreading out how you can find us and what happens if suddenly Kobo folded, you know, Barnes and Nobles has become so close to closing its doors.

It could happen. And with that happens, how's that going to affect where you sell your books if you were just selling them there? It's something to keep in mind. And this will hopefully, if you are considering becoming a career author or you're working towards that, this is something you want to do, you want to establish different income streams so that if something happens in one area, you know, hopefully the other one will be doing well enough. You also have some savings. You ha you have a safety net and you're not going to lose everything overnight. If suddenly, you know, Barnes and Nobles holds its doors, Amazon's decides to cut everybody to 50% or 30% of keeps it really small and something you're like making a third or a half of what you did the day before or

Jesper (16m 37s): it could happen. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say, I mean, we're not making up these scenarios here just to scare people because honestly it has happened several times. And I think if I look at the sort of the bus within the author community, it's starting to happen more and more because, uh, especially Amazon have put more and more like say automation and algorithms and bots in, in place to actually trigger for fraud basically. Right? So they're trying to determine automatically if certain accounts are basically cheating the customers, meaning and so decide samples, uh, people uploading am crappy book files just to earn some money or whatever, you know, all those sorts of things to, but I've heard more and more that, uh, should we call them quote unquote real authors have, are getting hit by these spots and, and basically having the account and spend it on Amazon and stuff like that.

Uh, and they have done nothing wrong in farther motor races. Of course. Uh, once a human starts in intervening and they get somebody from Amazon support to look at it, their accounts are, but again, Justin would take months. Yeah, yeah. Well usually it goes quite quickly to be honest. But but just imagine that the human being on the other end decides that. No, actually I think the is correct. And you are, I mean, you're, you're done. And if this is you and Ty income, what are you going to do then?

Yeah, I don't want to see people, but I just want to put it in perspective that we're just, we're not making up, you know, scary examples for the fun of it here. It actually does happen. No, it does. And that's what that is why it is scary. And that's why as a business you have to consider all the different income streams. So yeah, we'll stop trying to shake people into a terror. So before we make them forget to even listen to the rest of the episode, let's give them examples and you want to do what we did last time that we had some good feedback that we alternate.

Um, yeah, that's a good habit. Let's keep doing that. Okay. Do you want to start with the biggest one or shall we start with the smallest and work our way up? Uh, I don't have mine in a particular order, speak and small. I just have three different options. So for me it does not matter. Okay. Let's go ahead and just pick one. You go ahead. Okay. Um, so I think if some authors might be thinking about doing things like a, you know, professional speaking, coaching programs, stuff like that.

And that is a very good way to supplement your income because, uh, well at least after a while you might get a thought after as a am or asked for as a professional speaker. And if that's the case, then you cannot earn quite a healthy income from doing that. Um, but if that is something that you would like to do, it might very well be worth your time to write a nonfiction book on the topic that you want to teach. So basically using, using a nonfiction book as your starting point to get actually get into professional speaking or teaching or whatever it may be that you want to do because a nonfiction book cement your expertise, uh, and it goes a long way to earn you some credits about what you're talking about.

Because it's a bit funny because a while back, and now this is quite a while back, I wrote a book on how to use Twitter. And, uh, it was quite a lot of people who pick up that book really liked it and it has some really good strategies in it. And it was in part what I use to build quite a big Twitter following that, that I still have today of course. But, uh, uh, and at that point in time, I actually did a, this was many years back by the way, but I did reach out to some local, you know, local but in Denmark.

Everything is very relative. But I did reach out to some dangerous, uh, publishers and basically use the book as a starting point and then basically asked them, so if you, if you want to have some costs or do you authors that you're working with on how to use Twitter to, to build an audience, then you know, I can do a cost for you or come up to speak for you and, or whatnot. So I tried to do that, uh, as a kicking off, a bit of a additional revenue stream back then.

Uh, it was, I think it was even before autumn and I started working together. But, uh, as lo and behold, and this is probably lessons learned, don't, don't, don't do stuff on, on the basis of online because they change all the time. And I think I didn't, it didn't even take six month after I published the book before Twitter changed their terms of service, which meant that the entire strategy that was like the bedrock of that entire book went out the window.

So it was just so annoying. But, uh, yeah, I learned my lesson there and not to, don't write things about other people's platform that, that might change any day. Um, so, but anyway, that was a good lesson. And uh, the idea still holds true if, if, but try to pick something that you have maybe an expertise in already that's probably best, but also something that, um, that you can teach regardless of, uh, yeah, somebody changing the terms of service.

Autumn (22m 11s): Exactly. So more like if you're an awesome crime writer, of course, I don't know why you're listening to our podcast on fantasy writing if you're a crime writer, but say you're an awesome crime fiction writer and you're just really good at creating really fantastic dubious villains that no one would ever guess. And you wrote a book about how you do that. That would be, and then you could go, maybe there's a lot of great crime writers conventions and workshops and there's a lot you could do there that you would be invited to go speak to, or you could sign up to go and speak at and give talks on.

So that's sort of, you know, it doesn't have to be just because like how to use a platform, but if you're really good, if you created some innovative way of doing something, that's also a good starting point. It doesn't just have to be the writing style, but yeah. So it could be anything from how to write something to how to do something on a platform. Just be careful. It's a platform that doesn't completely change everything. Yeah. Every few months. Yeah,

Jesper (23m 10s): I heard on another podcast, there was this guy who, uh, he, I don't remember, I think he was actively writing thrillers or something, but, but that's beside the point. But, but he used to be a police officer, so he actually wrote some nonfiction books about how police procedures works. Uh, and then he was teaching other writers about, um, uh, how to, you know, make the whole police procedures in books. Uh, come, come across as, as realistic and not do all the mistakes, but it doesn't have to be about books either.

You know, the, the nonfiction maybe, maybe you write fantasy in your spare time and an end, the daytime time you are real estate 18 or something and maybe you can write a nonfiction book about something related to real estate. She has something and then that's what you want to teach and earn some, some extra income, uh, as a, as an extra stream of income on other site. For for doing that. I mean it does not have to be referred to writing at all. It's, but you could look at what, what are you good at and consider if that's something you could maybe make a bit of a side income on in one way or another.

Autumn (24m 16s): That's, yeah, that's very true. I like that one. And definitely something to think about it and thinking of some of the things I do and I'm like, yeah, I have some nonfiction books on, Hey, I'm coming out with one on our traveling across the United States. So that's typically a secondary stream there. You do cover the science as well, which is also like a another stream of income, right? So yeah. Yeah, absolutely right. It's so much fun. All right, so my number one is sort of funny because it's sort of takes away the problem on if Amazon decided to cut your revenue and that's doing direct ebook and signed paperback sales from your website.

So this is something that you either need to have a little bit of expertise to set up to be able to create the website. It'd be able to take money like through PayPal or Stripe and get all that interaction set up. But I will say that if you use WordPress and even Squarespace have some really easy, uh, plugins and platforms to be able to do online sales, you have to have your own domain. You can't be using wordpress.org the one that's free if you're using that, they will not allow you to sell and do stuff like that on your website.

But if you're, if you own your own domain and when you get it set up this way, it is 100% possible to go ahead and sell directly to your readers signed paperbacks, which obviously you're going to charge a little bit more than you'd buy it off of Amazon for and you can do ebook sales and the brilliant, brilliant, brilliant thing. This sounds so complicated. But book funnel, I hate to give the secret away. Book funnel has made an interaction integration with a couple of funding sources where if you happen to be already a member of book funnel to send out your art copy or to get people to join your mailing list, they're already set up to be the source file for when people buy your ebook.

And you just need to do these integrations that the first time you do it you go like, Oh my gosh, I do not know what I'm doing. But once you figure it out or you hire someone to figure it out for you, you can sell books. And that's just, not only is it exciting because you get 100% of the proceeds, a hundred percent royalties, which is just awesome. And then you can send that to your newsletter and explain why they're doing this. And most readers are savvy enough to say, Oh my gosh, this is wonderful. I will go there and buy the file and give you, you know, 100% of the, so when you're talking about a three 99 or four 99 book, that's fantastic.

That's, that's wonderful that you're getting 100% of the royalties and then you can do some really cool things. Like the last time I released a book, I released it early on my website to kind of entice people to go there and buy it off of from me. Or, you know, I can offer a sale that I'm still getting better percentage than Amazon, but it's still a slight discount. So there's lots of really cool things when you suddenly own the platform where you're selling your books from. So you might be able to tell, I'm kind of excited about this one because I've had a ton of fun and it's been very successful and it's still growing.

So it's a fantastic way of managing where you're selling your book so that you don't have to worry about what Amazon does. Obviously most people are still finding my books on Amazon or through other sources like that, but once they find me and join my mailing list, my newsletter, and some of them spontaneously see that you can buy the books right off my website. It's a fantastic way of getting a secondary income that I control a hundred percent of.

And it's not as painful as some people might imagine to start off with.

Jesper (27m 58s): No. But I think there was a key word in there that is really, really important among what you said. And that is the email list. Because selling your books direct, I would, I would say, at least from my point of view, it's more or less pointless and useless unless you have a good email is because just, just because you put your books up on your website with a purchase link on nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna find it. Especially because, no, they can Amazon.

Yeah. Because at least on Amazon, they might be searching for search terms like a, I don't know, whatever fantasy book or whatever, you know, and, and, and if you have the right keywords in your metadata or if you are buying a keyword ads on Amazon or something, you might pop up and they might find you like that, but on your own website, they will never, ever find you. I mean, did, the only way it's, it's, it's working. If you have an audience already and you have them on an email list and you can tell them, Hey, go here and buy the book.

Uh, if, if you want to support me because then, uh, I'm the, uh, you know, I don't, uh, I don't have to give a cut to Amazon. So in that way, and I think most, most readers would love to support you in that way. So they will love to do that. But it requires that you have an audience already. Otherwise it's pointless. I would say.

Autumn (29m 21s): Yeah, it's not going to be a huge seller unless you already have people finding you and signing up and people you can tell about and however that, however you've managed that, whether you have a massive Wattpad following and they'll, they're hungrily waiting for your book and they will happily buy it from you directly or you know, the mailing list and newsletter is definitely the easiest way of letting people know you can go straight to your website. But definitely you have to have some things set up. Like I said, you need a domain, you need to know how to do this. Book funnel is really one of the best ways of, of handling the ebook file.

And so yeah, there's, if you've got questions, you don't put them in the comments, but I found it really an exciting way of interacting and talking to readers and getting their support, which is fantastic.

Jesper (30m 7s): Yep. Okay. So my next one is, uh, well it's essentially like another product that you can put on the market without actually having to do any work. So that's a good starting point, isn't it? Great starting point. I want to do the one. Yeah. Uh, and it's basically putting your, the books in your series together in one file and then released a massive box set. So of course you could then say, well that's not really another stream of income. You're just putting together existing products and creating a new product out of it.

And that is correct. But actually quite often it's a different audience who reads box sets versus those who reach individual eBooks? I don't know. Do you re box sets? Autumn

Autumn (30m 51s): I tend to read individual eBooks, but I agree with you all the statistics and the research has said that this is a completely different audience than people who goes and buys the individual books. So I think that's kind of interesting. And yeah, bundles are a fantastic way of dealing with books.

Jesper (31m 10s): Yeah. Because I, and I think I'm one of these people myself because I hate reading boxes. It's, I don't, I just don't like them, you know, because, uh, there are so many pages in that file. And then when my, I look at, you know, at the bottom of the Kindle screen, you have this percentage of how much you've completed as it just like we read for two hours and removed 1%. It's like, Oh my God, I'm never going to get through it. You know? I like it when it's like a normal level and you read now and it moved two or 3%. It's like, okay, I'm making progress.

I don't know, it just, it bugs me. But then of course there are other people who will love the box sets and they buy box it. So it's just makes the point, right? It's two different audiences. Um, and, uh, and this is just another way where you can urge them, earn some extra income from products that you already created by just putting together, I'll put them together in a different way. Um, but I would say if you want to release a box set, please don't do it right after you release the final book in your series.

You know, because often, often box sets will have to be cheaper than buying the books individually. Uh, and it's, it's just not very cool if you like have people buy the last book of your series and then two weeks later you release a box set, which is 40% less than the entire series if you buy them one by one as much as the one a

Autumn (32m 32s): book. Yeah. I just, just one book or bundle of books. Yeah, no, I agree. You've got to watch your pricing there that I've, I've seen box sets for like 99 cents and yet the individual books or three 99 and that's just like really? Yeah. So normally I would say

Jesper (32m 49s): like six to 12 months before you release a box set after the final book in the series as has been gone out. And then you can then you can safely release a box, set a and not worry about the pricing because at that point your readers will have bought the books that they want to buy and enough time has passed that they won't be bucked about it. So, uh, maybe just place a reminder for yourself like six to 12 months later to, uh, to make sure to create a box set out out of your series. And then yeah, that's a good alternative income that requires

Autumn (33m 20s): absolutely nothing, almost almost method, just formatting and maybe a different covers so it stands apart. Slightly agree. Alright, well mine sort of along those lines. And another great source of income is actually turning your completed book into an audio book. So this is, the audio books are coming more and more popular, just like podcasts because you know, people have a lot more time to listen than they do to sit down and read and concentrate.

Of course, I still prefer written books because I just have a visual. I don't quite take an information the same one, I only hear it, but that doesn't mean audio books aren't fantastic for most other folks. So I think they're great. And I mean, I have most of my books in audio and it's, it can be so much. It's so exciting to actually hear your own books spoken by someone who actually knows what they're doing with their voice and create a very exciting, um, telling of what you've written.

So it's not something that isn't necessarily difficult. There are platforms, we've talked about them previously about how to do them. Um, but it can also, it's not necessarily free. That best way to do this is to have the money to invest so that you pay the narrator directly. But that can be quite a bit of money. I mean, a good narrator can be up words of $300 per finished hour. There can be other ones who are a lot cheaper, like 50% or $50.

But you know, you can be paying quite a lot to have your book narrated. And there's some good online conversions. I can tell you how many thousand words makes a finished hour of production. So you can kind of get out of budget and figure that out. And I won't say that this is going to net you, you know, a ton of money. I, from my experience and talking to a lot of other authors who are doing audio books, if your book is not selling fantastically as a written book, it's not necessarily going to pre a breakout hit and audio books.

So do consider that when you're figuring out, you know, how much to pay our narrator and there are some options where you can do royalty shares. So if you really just want to get your feet, um, that is a good way of doing it. And I would also say it really helps that if you have a series, you want to go ahead and line up like the whole series with the same narrator. Wait until you know you're getting your audio books when you have all the books in your series written. So you know they have an incentive to listen to all the books. I know I've had comments when I released my first audio book and they're like, Oh, it's great.

I love it. I just so disappointed to think that the, the other two books will never be done. Like it takes time to do this, you know, but there is that idea that a lot of authors are getting their feet wet, dabbling in it to see if they like audio books, um, and never are going to complete the series. So go and try to get it all. It's the same as producing and launching books, same idea, same technique. A series is better launching them back to back. All that stuff holds true, but it is definitely another means and it's a whole different, again, a whole just like bundles.

It's a whole different genre of people who are going to listen to your stories instead of read your stories. So yeah, consider that niche.

Jesper (36m 44s): Fully agree. It's, it's a, it's again one of those things where it's a different audience. Um, but I would also say that unless you have some sales on new eBooks already, especially if you're going for the role to share option, that part becomes a bit difficult because I think in the earlier days, it, at least from this is here, right? So I, I have not, I'm not talking from personal experience here in full transparency, but based on hearsay, I think in the earlier days, like years back, it was not that difficult to get oil narrators to do royalty shares on ACX.

But now they are getting really picky about what they want to narrate. If it's on a royalty share, most of them prefer to get paid upfront. Uh, so of course we'll have a lot of sales on your books already then they will probably agree on a royalty to share. But unless you can show to them that, Hey, this book is selling really well, uh, then most likely I think at least those who knows what they're doing, the good ones, they will turn you down. Our wanting. She, so I would honestly not spend too much time on trying to find one and hundred down.

Uh, unless you have good sales on, on the book already. Or if you can pay up front, then that's a good option and then you can go ahead and do that. But, uh, yeah, and, and even, even then, I would probably still say that unless you, unless the book is selling fairly well, you might never earn back the money you're spending on your book because it's, it's still relatively expensive. Uh, maybe in three, four, five years maybe there will be options where you can get robots to read it and in a voice where you actually cannot hear the difference from humans.

I mean, I would not be surprised if that happens in the next five years or something. But until the production cost comes down, you do need to really consider if, I mean the, the audio book market is growing like crazy, so that's a good thing. But just making the jump, just because the market grows like crazy might not be the best of ideas if you're never gonna earn, earn back the money. So maybe the next one I can pick up on that is about affiliate marketing.

Uh, and basically this means that you are taking some time out to sell someone else's product in exchange for money. So as an example, um, autumn and I only opened the doors for our premium writing course twice a year. And, uh, when we do, we are often offering an affiliate program. And I think if I remember correctly, last time we offered a affiliate marketers $100 for each seat that they sold in the course.

So there are also opportunities to sell products like this, so you know, other products from other vendors. Um, so you can get a special affiliate link from the company who created that product. So imagine that you are using am some sort of product yourself and then you, um, wanting to promote that product for whatever reason. Uh, you can then go and reach out to that company and say, Hey, I would like to promote your product.

Uh, and they will set up, if they do offer phileo phileo services, of course, they will set you up for the affiliate link that basically tracks everybody who then purchased a product through your personal affiliate link, eh, that Nick gets tracked and you get paid a commission. Just like I mentioned that am autumn and I did last time when we had our writing costs, uh, offered and we also paid affiliate commission to people who helped selling the, the cost. So affiliate marketing does take some time, I would say.

So you need to be mindful that you have to spend time promoting and get the, you know, getting the word out there about the product that you're trying to sell. But it can be a nice way to supplement your income if you want, especially as I said, if it's a product that you already using them, that that's a good option for you. So, uh, and one of my favorite uses of affiliate marketing is actually if you do have a website with your books, be an affiliate for your own books. And yeah.

Yeah. It seems so subtle, but, um, you know, if you're going to direct people to Amazon from your website, it's, you should be getting at least something back. It kind of adds up, you know, ups or royalty just a smidge. So it's definitely worth doing a signing up, even if it's just for that. Yeah. Yeah. So you can set up an affiliate account with Amazon. It's quite easy. It takes no time and then generate affiliate links for, for your own books. Uh, but the key is the, like what autumn just said that the key is that you need to place those affiliate on your own website.

So if you're a fresh sample are running Facebook ads or something. Technically, I've never, I've never heard Amazon cracking down on this, but technically you are not allowed to use an Amazon affiliate link in a Facebook ad because it has to come from your own website. So the same thing with newsletters. Um, you know, with your newsletter, it's technically not supposed to be an affiliate link though. I do know some author to do, do that. But it's supposed to only be from your own website. Not from even your newsletters.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. So yeah, so that's some, that's another option for you to earn some extra money. Uh, so it's essentially if you have products you already using a like those products, that's, that's a good option. Or if you have, you know, your, maybe you don't use the product but you know the company and you feel comfortable, you know, vouching for that company. So why not try to earn a bit of income from that? Um, you probably want to look at the, how much are they paying you to do the field sales?

Because as I said, it requires some time. So if you're earning like close to nothing, we'd sail then that's not my, that might not be where you want to spend your time. But but for example, like, like autumn and I offered $100 last time for everybody who saw this, even now cost that, you know, if you sell just 10 seats, that's, that's 1000 bucks right there. Right. So that's quite good. Of course, again, it takes a bit of effort and time to, to make those 10 sales, but it's, it's something that is possible. And uh, of course, if, if that is something you're interested in in terms of becoming an affiliate for our courses, then just join the amwritingfantasy Facebook group.

So if you search for amwritingfantasy in the group section on Facebook, you will find us and when, and if we decide to offer more affiliate bounties in the future, we'll post it in that group. So when it becomes relevant, certainly that's an option for you.

Autumn (43m 31s): That's a good one. And we love the help and we treat our affiliates well. And so I get the last one and it's sort of playing off what we've been talking about before, if what you're happened to be really, really, really good at is newsletters, getting people organized, getting a lot of readers active in your newsletter, and you start getting a newsletter that's getting into 2030, 50,000 readers. You can actually start selling spots instead of just like looking for newsletter swaps with other authors.

You can say, Hey, I have 50,000 readers that they love fantasy and for five or $10, you know, I will feature your book. It's almost like what BookBub is doing but just at a little bit of a lesser level. And there are some folks who are making some money off of their ability to organize readers and get the different genres together and be able to sell books. And if that happens to be something you're good at, you can sell that to other authors really easily. Cause we're all for that, aren't we?

Jesper (44m 34s): Yep. Absolutely. So I think in general we could say that, you know, S authors, you all as an author, you're running a business and it's just smart business move to diversify your income because it just makes you less vulnerable for any future instances where something might happen that you didn't account for. So, so that's the smart way of doing it. It is. And I mean we, there's things we didn't talk about. You and I had mentioned that, you know, we could mention, you know, selling your international rights, things like that.

I mean, there's a whole bunch of other avenues that are out there. So once you start looking around for ways of diversifying your income, you'll be surprised at maybe what you can come up with and what you had thought of and what other people are doing. Yup. So next Monday, if all goes well, at least I'll have a great guest on to talk about writing compelling heroes and villains.

Narrator (45m 31s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 55 – How to Prepare for a New Year of Writing

On the verge of a new year, Autumn and Jesper decided to share some of the best practices authors should be aware of as they prepare for a another year of writing.

Goal setting - especially the need to set realistic goals - is also discussed in this episode 55 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast.

As mentioned, please provide some feedback on what you like and what you don't like so much about the podcast (if anything).

You can reach Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Weifarer

And Jesper: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper

Or send an email via the contact form on this page: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/about/ 

We would love the feedback.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper and I'm autumn. This is episode 55 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and after we kicked off 2020 last Monday with a view on the awesome writing software scribbler, we are now going to continue setting you up for success with a conversation about, should we call it best practices for 2020 and some goals setting like that.

Autumn (55s): Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment or good to definitely look at some big picture stuff because Hey, it's the new year and now as a time to traditionally set back and set some goals and look ahead and make some changes. So I think that's a perfect way to begin even. You're a writing year in 2020. Yeah. We should probably have made that episode 54 and then talk about Scrivener today. But that go, there you go. I think it works out. We everyone needs to recover I think a little bit after new years.

Yeah, that's true. Maybe just, uh, having this weekend between might be a good thing. Yeah. That's speaking of ease into it. Yes. And now that we're past our week, um, even though we're technically time traveling, how has your week been going?

Jesper (1m 41s): That's been good. Uh, actually this morning I was doing some of the monthly checks on the stats for this podcast and actually I was thinking that maybe I could just share a bit about what I learnt there. That'd be exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Because since we started the podcast, uh, we've, we've seen consistent increase in the number of downloads per month, so, so that's of course very good. Uh, for some weird reason has still not, can wake up why September was just way better than all the other months.

Uh, but, uh, but even here in the November stats that I just did, so again, we try and traveling a bit here. So we're still in December technically, but in the end of November stats, uh, we also saw a positive trend in the number of downloads per month. So, so that's good. And uh, you know, basically we are releasing these episodes every Monday because we want to be helpful. And of course we are also trying to make it a, a slightly entertaining rather than a boring rundown of, of the topics that we pick.

So, so that's why basically that we're checking, I'm checking the download numbers every month because uh, you know, unless we see that people are actually finding the podcast useful and are listening, then it would be a waste of our time because at the end of the day, all the podcasting is time away from writing. So I think it's good that is trending in a positive direction. Right. Autumn

Autumn (3m 9s): plus it's like, again, I partially, we do this too cause we like to help other authors and it is nice. It's kind of one way of knowing unless people like go flood us with comments, which would be fine. Um, but I mean, how do we know we have to gauge that we're actually reaching people and hopefully helping them somehow. And that would be through comments or downloads and things like that. So it's kind of good to see a positive progression that way. Yeah.

Jesper (3m 34s): But I ha I have a small request that I would actually like to make to our listeners if you could with that. Yeah. All right. I want to hear it. This is, yeah, because we have a, we have a few reviews on the iTunes store at the moment that there was only four of them, so we need to be really careful about jumping to any conclusion based on those reviews. But, uh, since the volume of those reviewers are rather low, I want to be a bit careful here, but the review average is a 3.5. Uh, and I would like it to be meaningful enough.

For. So I think if you agree with me here autumn I would like to ask our listeners if they could please provide a bit of feedback because we've now been doing this, uh, in, in new wish format, you know, no, no longer YouTube videos converted to podcast, but actual podcast episodes we're doing, we've been doing that for what, like half a year or something.

Autumn (4m 29s): I think Maddie, I think you're right though. I was something like that. Yeah.

Jesper (4m 34s): Yeah. And so we, we've been doing sort of the same format here for six months. And of course when we started out, we, you know, as I've talked about before, I listened to a ton of podcasts myself, so I know at least what I like in podcast. And that was sort of how we decided to set up this podcast in, in the, you know, with the different sections that we go through on each episode, what we talk about, uh, and, and all of that. So, so there was a thinking behind why we set it up the way we did.

But at the same time, of course, we don't know if, if you're you dear listener, like that setup or not. Uh, so what I would really love is if we could, if I, for example, added the link in the show notes to both Autumns and my own Twitter profiles, but also a link to the contact form on the amwritingfantasy website so that you can send us an email then I would really love it if each of our listeners could just spend one minute to just give us a bit of feedback and just tell us what you like about the podcast in its current format and maybe what you would like to see different, if anything with the current format.

And then, yeah, because I, I really would like to get some feedback from listeners here. Uh, and of course, again, we need a bit of volume, so please don't think that, yeah, I'll let everybody else sent autumn and Jesper uh, feedback because then everybody will be thinking that and then we'll get only a few responses. And to be honest, I'm not willing to make changes on the basis of just a few responses. So we need a bit of volume. So please, uh, just spend that one minute if you don't mind. And then just tell us what you like and what you would like differently as well.

Then we will definitely consider if we see some reoccurring themes popping up in dose responses, then we'll definitely consider if we need to do any changes or modifications to the layout of how we run each episode.

Autumn (6m 33s): That sounds good. Always a good practice to hear from people and see what's going and take a survey. Yeah. So what has been going on in your life? Autumn well, I, I actually finished a book. Yeah, it's a, well I finished it in December, so hopefully by the time reading, well no, you're making me depressed, but it's a writing. I wa there's a book I want to read. I hope maybe by the time this airs I'll have that red.

But yeah. So hopefully by the time this is out am I'll have a do book out is oneness. Co-written with my husband about our adventures driving across the United States for the last four years with over a hundred thousand miles a day or our tires and sort of a how to do it and if you're going to do it, how to be safe kind of book. So, Oh, it's PRI. We've been working on it off and on for like a year. And so usually it's my husband who's dragging his feet and he got his part done so fast, so I got to give kudos to him for really pulling it together and then frauding me saying, what do I gotta do your part?

What are you going to edit it? What are you gonna so it's done and I'm so excited to get that out to the world because I know I have a couple folks we've talked to that I have promised it to for probably the last eight months. So yay. I've got a book out my 17th whew. It sounds good.

Jesper (8m 1s): You know, a very, like this book, is there other books like this on on the market already? Or is this like a, the first time

Autumn (8m 9s): one on Amazon? Believe it or not, it's not the first one there. Am overlanding adventure driving, uh, kind of nomadic travels is becoming very, very popular at least in the United States. But I mean for some countries like Australia and New Zealand, it is a walkabouts it's what you do. However, doing it on it as a vehicle, vehicle based travel. Um, yeah, it's something that people are getting more into and there's a certain very big niche on what kind of vehicle you need and the equipment to take and how to stay safe if you're going to some of the remote roads that we've traveled the last few years.

That's why Adam got a medical certificate and everything so he can take care of me and hopefully if I take, I had to take care of him. He wouldn't be unconscious cause I needed to know have him tell me what to do. We'd be free to think that one.

Jesper (8m 58s): Yeah. But you know, my marketing mindset is already speculating that you could probably get some cheap MSR ads, keywords for stuff like that. I, I guess there's not too much competition in that field. On on the keywords, maybe fingers crossed. Oh, we go on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast. So in the amwritingfantasy Facebook group, Dwayne said that he has several stories set in the same world and he wants to give one of them, eh, new our field to it.

And uh, he was concerned for how to achieve this without it seeming to take place on an alternate universe. So I just wanted to say that because I love how the group offers each other lot of help and advice. You know, Lawrence response was very helpful and insightful because she said, quote, I would make a list of some of the things we take for granted about life in our world and change those in your world based on what's been present since the past.

And then she said, I think a great example of this is the last Airbender the cartoon in the earth kingdom, they have trains, but they are powered by earth benders. They developed the technology to build trains but not the engines to power them. Similarly in the fire nation, they have tanks, but the ammunition is just fire benders, shooting fire.

Autumn (10m 23s): Oh, that's interesting.

Jesper (10m 26s): Yeah. But I, I thought, you know, the idea about, okay, so he had some concerns here and she says, you know, make a list and of the things that are coming in and change it to something else. Right. I think very useful and simple, but it's very useful.

Autumn (10m 39s): Yes. I see a lot of the comments on the group there. Everyone's so helpful. I mean we have, I can't think of any big problems we've had. They're just, it's a fantastic place to get feedback and ideas though. It's funny cause I mean, one of the things we don't really talk about here very often is that we actually have newsletter that we send out. I think it's like every three weeks and it has a writing tips and world-building tips and stuff too. So besides this podcast, we actually have a newsletter as well. Actually, we've got that going for a while and we had a good comment, um, that someone emailed back to us just the other day, or at least the other day from what we're recording.

And they were, had a question about when is it okay to use a word like our name that someone else has used. And they were like, give an example. I use the word Kith for one of my fantasy races and he wasn't sure if I knew it has been used for um, a very similar group, oddly enough, uh, in a different role playing game that I had never heard of. So no, that's not where I got it from, but it was a great discussion on, you know, when is it okay to, to use a word that someone else has, you know, also use and to me, it really comes down to it.

None of us are really making up 100%. I bet. No matter what words you make up right now in your mind, it is a real world word somewhere in a language in this world. So it's one of those things that, you know, if it's not, if you Google it and there's not 20 pages on someone else using it for a specific thing, it's as also as not trademarked or copyrighted. It's okay to use because everything's been used before. But I did give them the advice that, you know, if you do Google something and you wanna like name something Hogwarts or the Shire, you don't even want to go there, even if they're not trademark, because you're going to be at page 12,598 on the Google search and no one's ever gonna find your version.

But for something like a, the of my fantasy race or other strange words that you come up with and you look around and there's not that much else out there like it, that's okay to use even if someone else has used it somewhere because unless they're trademarking at our copyrighting it, it is legally free to be used. Yeah. Well, this has been the whole, well about

Jesper (13m 10s): to say scandal, but all this stupid stuff to be honest, in the indie author community over the last, uh, well not, not, not recently, but probably like four or five months back where, uh, or maybe it was less, but where some authors were trying to trademark certain titles and also words like there was somebody who wanted to treat my trademark, a cozy mystery so that the, I mean, all that stuff drove me insane to be honest.

But, but I, but I agree. I mean titles and names for raises and all that, it's, it's, it's a free fall. You know, you, you can have the same titles and you can have the same names of somebody else. But I do also support what autumn said that when we, uh, talk, uh, when we're talking about fantasy names, which actually we have a bit of information in, in the book on plotting that we're going to release in 2020 about how to create those names. But one of the advices that we give in there is actually also to try to search a bit on the internet to see if there's some well known stuff that is am already called whatever you want to use as a name because there's just no reason to, just because you didn't know that they w it was something that am somebody else has already used in a, in a setting or a book or in a game or whatever it may be.

There's just no reason to have readers starting to get those associations when they read it. Right. So it's just best to avoid if you can. And certainly if you go by the really, really, uh, famous examples like the Shire, like on set, you know, then you're probably gonna slap be in the, in the review. So if you do that, so just complete the stay clear of stuff like that. But in principle, there is nothing like called stealing in, in this particular situation. To be honest.

Autumn (15m 4s): No, not really. I think it's, um, it's, there's gonna be some overlap. It's bound to happen. There are so many people are writing and there are so many books and even if you go back through history of what you might not have read in, might not even know is out there, probably there's going to be some duplication. It's just a fact that's going to happen. So just try to keep it to a minimal and, and don't, don't do it because you did read something and you thought it was a cool world, a new swipe. It try to make it honestly having come up with it on your own.

Jesper (15m 41s): All right, so in terms of a best practices for 2020, that I think that that was what we ended up calling it, but it's basically like a list of some things that are good to do here at the beginning of the year to think about, to get yourself set up best for, for the year to come. Uh, and also some goal setting. And maybe that's a good place to start. I don't know. Autumn

Autumn (16m 3s): I think so. I think, um, it's a good, yeah, goals are a perfect way to start because 20, 20, I mean, like we said with new year's resolutions and everything else, it is a new year and historically this is a great time to look ahead and figure out what you want to do and accomplish in this new year. Because otherwise, unless you do that, the year can just run away with you and you'll maybe, yeah, it might never really achieve anything much less a big project or whatever you want to go.

So I know when I do some goal setting, I mean I tried to think about things from everything from like books I want to, how many books I want to write and publish or courses we want to put out. There's a whole bunch of stuff that we look at when we say it's almost always too ambitious. We are and life does get the better of us. But you know what? I'd rather be struggling to reach the mountain top then, you know, be standing on top of the tiny little Hill boy. I did it. I did it in like June. I'm going to work.

Jesper (17m 10s): Yeah. Uh, I tend to divide my goal setting in the West or at least think about, I mean it's a bit different now to be honest because we had to worry about it. So we usually talk about what we want to do and we we have all very long to do list and then we tried to figure out where are we going to start, what's on the top and then we'll work down the list. Right. And we never get to the bottom by the end of the year anyway. So it's a slightly different now. But if I'm thinking back to before we were doing everything together, then I would divide my goals into three different buckets.

Um, and uh, maybe I could just run over what those,

Autumn (17m 47s): yeah. I'm curious. I'm, I'm guessing writing

Jesper (17m 50s): marketing as something else. What are they pretty close? Yeah, I mean the bucket bucket number one would be what I want to achieve in D author business. So that could be a, for example, how many books I wouldn't want to put out or that I want to have X amount of revenue or whatever. Something like that. Right? But it's like if I'm thinking about my authorship as a business and then I'm basically setting up business goals for myself on what I want to achieve and I make them very concrete, like sub goals on how to get there.

So, so that I can track throughout the year and it's not like it's a yearly goal and then I don't know until 12 months later if I'm on track or not. Right. So I try to make it some, some concrete sub goals, uh, to, to get there. So if it is revenue, then I'll probably have some goals about how much I want to increase the revenue per quarter. If it's a writing books, then of course then I want to say something like, uh, in the first half I want to publish let's say two books and second half, two books, for example, something like that. So that's bucket number one.

Excellent. And then I also used to have a pocket number two, which was about how I was going to improve my writing craft. Oh, I like this one. Yeah. So that could be stuff like, uh, I need to read at least let's say 10 nonfiction books on writing craft fuck sample or it could be, I also really like, like the, um, uh, Brandon Sanderson has on YouTube, you can find, I think if you type in write about dragons on YouTube, you can find a full university level costs.

Brandon Sanderson has their for, he's done it for several years and I think all the years worth of classes are there for, you could just watch them for free. So I also used to watch all of those, a couple of, well many years back now, but I watched all of those as well. So if you want to check that out, just type in, write about pregnancy and YouTube and you will find them. So, so that's another way you can improve your craft. And it could also be of course, that you just want to ride, let's say 10 short stories and you have some mentor or something that you're working with and you want to get feedback on.

I don't know, but, but basically writing craft, but what's my pocket number two? And then bucket number three was about, uh, yeah, you basically cast it before them. So it's about promotion. How, how am I going to promote myself? So that could be, for example, if back then I was running a YouTube channel, so I would have some goals for my videos and both, both in terms of how many views I wanted or, uh, how many comments I wanted and stuff like that. Uh, or well, in the beginning of this episode as well as she had some podcast stats, right?

So it could also be that you are running a podcast and you're tracking how you're performing there. Um, or if you are not creating videos or podcast or blog posts, something like that. Perhaps you just want to learn how to be the master of Amazon ads or Facebook ads or something like that. So you knew you were going to invest either time or money or both in understanding and learning how to do that. Um, so we it could be anything, but the key is that you pick something that you want to improve and then you work at it until you master it.

So, so that that's, that's how I did it. Oh, I like that. I mean it definitely makes sense and I agree it's, you can't set goals and then put them in a, you know, save the file and stick it in a drawer and never, you know, get back to it. It's really important that it's somewhere visible. Like I like to put my goals on a sticky note. Um, well digital sticky note that's right on my laptop desktops so that whenever I'm, you know, closing up programs are going in between things. I see the sticky note that says, you know, this is a goal this is something you want it to work on.

Yeah. And it isn't, I think it really does help you reach further if you really say, Hey, I want to do this many books or I want to accomplish this. It really does keep it tight center that this is my goal and I've got to keep working towards it. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. As long as you keep working towards it. Exactly. Because I think a lot of the time what happens is that people who set themselves some goals and they'll get distracted about something, they'll start doing something else and they've sort of, yeah, I know do I have those goals into draw, but I'm not really working against them or to achieve them.

So it's sort of just fizzles outright that that's, I think that's one of the things from the other thing is also that a lot of the times people struggle to just make their goals concrete enough. So it's this sort of fluffy stuff that you know you need to be able to track whether you're on track on it. Because if you cannot track it, you have no idea where you're going. I mean, of course if you say, I'm going to release four books this year, published four books, that's pretty easy to track with an odd, you're doing that. But if you're, if you have other types of goals, like am for example, I want to, let's say master Facebook ads like we talked about just a second ago, right?

How do you attract that? Well then that's where you need to, you need to break it down in one way or another to say, okay, how do I know when I've mastered it? Right? So maybe it's something like I need to have 10 different Facebook ad campaigns, uh, that turns a profit, uh, or something, you know, I, I don't know, I'm just making something up here. Right. But, but do you need to make it concrete enough that you can actually track with them or not? You are achieving what you want to achieve. And then let's say by the end of the year you only got seven Facebook campaigns that is turning a profit.

Well, I think that's pretty damn good anyways. So you should be happy about that, right? Yeah. Say there's times where you might not even know. You might be such a novice to Facebook ads that you don't even know what is a, is achievable goal. So if you might start off by just by saying, by you know, creating one that, a campaign that's really getting a positive return on investment is like something to

Autumn (23m 46s): be proud of. It's, and then you might have to revise it and rash, you know, tweak it a little bit more as you suddenly realize, Oh this is what it's about as you start taking the training. But yeah, that's a fair point. Yeah. I think a lot of the time what I see people struggle with as they, maybe they can say like I want to write this many books but they don't, they have a hard time with breaking it down into the milestones. You know, the sub-goals that make it achievable, breaking down to steps that are bite size. It may be or a monthly or weekly to make it happen. Cause I know like one of my big goals a couple of years ago now was like I wrote down, I wanted to finally be a featured author and BookBub.

I just, I wanted to hit that target. I don't know why, but it was in my head and that's what I wanted to do. And so yeah, so I could write that down. But how do you do that? So I broke it down like I wanted to read you my covers. I didn't think there is a strong, I want to read you my descriptions. I needed more reviews. You know, you start doing all of these processes. I needed more followers on BookBub and by breaking it down and say doing the new covers, I hit my number of reviews I wanted, I redid my formats, made sure that the book itself looked spectacular and then I submit it off to BookBub because that's part of your goal is like once you think you have everything in place you you got to make sure you're actually putting it in.

And lo and behold, I actually did it. So it's totally achievable if you break down the steps that on the outside, that's just like you can't do, I want to be a New York times bestselling author. Well how do you do that? Look at the steps, see what other people are doing, break it down into actionable items and then actually do each one and check it off. And yeah, maybe you won't hit that big, big one, but at least you will be there. And I bet you will have learned so much along the way that you know, you might still hit it yet.

Jesper (25m 39s): Yeah, I agree. And I would also say, because we'd, what you said before, it sort of made me think a bit, because I would also say if you have some goals about how many books you on the right, I mean if you're working on your face first book, just make your goal that to finish that book, because honestly bef before you finished the first one, you have no idea how long it's gonna take. And it's, it's that first book is also going to take much, much, much longer than you think it will. So don't start out by saying, if you had never written a book before, I don't, don't start out by saying I'm going to write four books this year.

I mean forget it. Just say I'm going to finish one book and that's it. Yeah.

Autumn (26m 15s): And that first book will also take much, much longer than probably every other book you will. Right. I think everyone's first book is a huge learning curve.

Jesper (26m 24s): Yeah. My first one took one and a half year and uh, and I think nowadays we can properly, if we focus, not if we don't do all the cost building and all the other stuff we have going autumn but I think we can turn out a book in three, four months. That's what I was going to say. It's probably three, four months. Even even when I'm writing, I've written four and a half books in one year

Autumn (26m 44s): before while still having a full time job and it is totally, I was so focused and they good characters, they basically wrote themselves, I could barely keep up. And when you get into that kind of flow it's fantastic but you're not always going to be there. And you know four books in a year with a job and kids and family and life. That's a little tough. So don't be tough on yourself. You'd be do stuff that you know is going to make you stretch but not necessarily overwhelm you and make you have a breakdown I either.

Jesper (27m 20s): No, exactly. I think that's important. And I mean, once, you know what you're doing, four books a year is probably not unrealistic but, but you need to know what you're doing and you need to have the practice, uh, from publishing before you can set yourself goals like that. So that was just like a very quick, uh, like wanting the end up stressing yourself out because goal setting is good. But if you put really unrealistic goals and you work yourself into the ground because of it, then that's not worth it.

Autumn (27m 48s): No, not at all. You you should make this still fun and they should be, you know, some flexibility and stuff in there as well that, you know, you're, you have an achievement you want to get to, but you know, you still need to take family vacation and go to your sister's wedding and all those things too. I wouldn't honestly say as you're doing your goal setting that, you know, life goals should be up there and having fun. Um, that should also be one of your buckets. Your, you're filling as you're looking at your goals for the year, not just writing and marketing.

Uh, you got to make sure your balance, all of that with some family and fun and so going over. So we do goals but I think this is another time a year that is good to do some like once a year cleaning a house. That's what I like to do in January.

Jesper (28m 36s): Yeah, exactly that. And that was just about to say, because you told me before we started recording that you have a small list of things and and sober. Why. So I thinking maybe we could just jump back and forth through you pick one of your lists and I pick one of mine and so forth.

Autumn (28m 47s): Okay. Well I'll go ahead and start. So one of the things I like to do this time of year is going over my manuscripts and for me I like to look for missing links. Like did I publish a book and I forgot to add it to a previous book or did my website change at all? Or even just going through the manuscript and checking all those links are actually working. Cause you know sometimes you publish stuff and there's a kink and you didn't realize it. So I like to go over my manuscripts at least once a year. And even if any readers during the year sent me any updates saying Hey that wordsmith spelled and I didn't go fix it right away, now's the time to make sure I get all of those fixed and polished and cleaned.

Jesper (29m 27s): Yeah. That was also on my list to be honest. And I, because also I had the ones about, you know, you publish the book one and maybe in the back of that book you wrote like book two coming in 2019 like yeah, great. And now which went in 20 so yeah, need to up the dose.

Autumn (29m 43s): Definitely. That's a good point. It's, I even have seen, cause I like to do a sample chapters for something in the back of my books and sometimes those don't get updated to the actual polished versions or maybe I want to link to a different book and all those little things. It's a good time to think about, you know, even marketing. Like am I, I started putting the back of my books. I'm a little social media page, like sorta like hashtags and the ways of sharing and stuff. I need to go back and add that to all my other books now.

So I guess I'll be doing that this January.

Jesper (30m 17s): Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So should I pick one from that list? Go for it. Yeah. So I also put in email list here. And what I mean by that is that am so there's a few different things I want to go over here. I'm checking your, you know, total open rates, your click through rates and how many subscribers you're getting and from where they are signing up is pretty good to do here at the beginning of the year. Uh, and of course your email service provider, whether you're using convert kit like as or MailChimp or whatever, we'll tell you all these steps.

So when you log in, that as part will tell you. Um, but it's good to do because if one of the things that you're offering in exchange for email addresses is outperforming another thing that you're doing or offering, then maybe you should talk, uh, down on the one that actually performed really well in and do that more, promote that more here in 2020. Um, and also when it comes to the emails themselves, maybe you need to clean up your list.

Uh, and what I mean by that is that if you finding that you have very low open rates and very low click through rates, it's could easily be because you have a lot of death. Wait on and uh, what I mean by that is that when people are signing up to get something for free, probably as something you're offering, uh, it could be like a free chapter. Maybe. Maybe it's a full free novel or it could be like a character sheet that you're giving away, something you're giving away. Maybe in the back end of those books that we just talked about, that could be a link to say, Hey, you want to, you want to check out this character?

Or what he, what he's been up to after the novel ended or whatever it may be. Maybe you have a short story or something, uh, and then people sign up to get those free things. But some of those people who sign up and it's probably more people than you think, actually just sign up, get that freebie thing that they were looking for and then they will never open an email again. And if you have too many of those people on your list, it will hurt your open rates and if it helped or hurt your open rates, it will actually also hurt your deliverability of the emails.

So it's, it's no good basically. So you need to do a cleanup. Uh, I like to actually purchase the email list, uh, both my personal one, but also autumn on my list every quarter. Um, so what I will do is that I will use the convert kit, basically has a way that it keeps track of those who haven't opened an email. For I think it's 90 days. Uh, and then we sought those out and I'll send them a, an email just to those people.

And say that we can see that they haven't opened an email. And, uh, then I will tell them that, uh, if you want to stay on the list, this list, you need to click this link. And if you do not click this link, we will delete you within a week. Like cutthroat. There you go. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you know, as authors, we also have to treat this as a business and we're paying for the people on the list. And if they have no interest in reading the emails, why should we be paying for having them on the list? Right? So that's why we purchased them, because we only want people on a list, which actually interesting in reading, uh, the stuff that we emailed them.

So the ones that, because the way that it, eh, convert kit in this case, and I think most other email providers work the same way, the way that they track whether or not people opened the email is that they have a transparent one pixel size image in the email that they put in. And then they track if that image gets loaded. Uh, but in some email programs, uh, they will have a disabled image loading by default. So that means that it, those people might actually open and read the emails.

But the PIM, because the pixel did not get loaded, convert kit will think that these people are open the emails even though they are actually opening. So that's why I'm sending that email instead of just a leading people because then the ones who are actually interested in our emails can, they will click the link and say, Hey, you know, don't do not delete me. And then of course we won't. Uh, but this is a very good way I think to keep healthy email list. And then healthy email list is extremely important. I'll not go into all the details on deliverability, uh, why now, but actually in 2020 autumn and I also planning to release a completely free course for authors called self-publishing success.

And in that, uh, I'll have a full module on email lists and I'm going to explain why this is so important so you can stay tuned for that. But, uh, but that was a bit on email list. I hope that was not too boring. No. And while he's going to even add to it. You know, if you have automations, which a lot of us, uh, as authors do weed, not sending out every single email or just doing campaigns. So if you have any like onboarding automations normally see which ones are performing well. But again, check your links. I'm going to be like, this is just the hold up a sign. Check your links, go and go look at them really quick.

Make sure they're as evergreen as you think they are. Make sure that the, you know, double check your spelling. It's just a good time to look at it again with fresh eyes and see if there's anything you could improve at Tony. Want a change, new information you want to add. It really is important to keep these up to date.

Autumn (35m 38s): I know I've gotten one before and there was a reference to something that was like five years in the past and I was like, come on. You know, just go through these every once in a while people and make sure that they're still accurate and going to the correct websites and everything like that. That's very important. And actually speaking of websites, so that's going to be my next one because you know, I like to do websites, but this is a good time to run through your website. Especially go into Chrome in incognito mode.

Go in as a random browser and go and see what it looks like. Check your legs, you know, look at the information on mobile. Yeah, I check it on mobile. I'll go and look at your stuff as a new reader, not just with your lens of being the author and what you think it looks like from the back end, but what it really looks like for, you know, go to your spouses or your kids' computer and go see what it looks like as someone who is not logged into the site and make sure everything looks good. Am get those links shaped up.

And again, if you did book Sue published anything, if you're not running a blog or even if you're running a blog, go update it just now is the time of year to add that to your to do list. Even if it's a modest amount, go get it going again and make sure everything's clean. Your images are good that you, even if you're in your backend, you've updated your plugins and your WordPress theme or your wicks, whatever you're using because the older those things get the closer it is to crashing or being vulnerable to hackers. So make sure you get all your software up to date before someone swipes all your files.

Yeah.

Jesper (37m 15s): Next one of mine actually goes hand in hand with what you just said because other than website I would also say check your social media profiles and that includes your bio on Amazon or good reads or anywhere else where you might have written a bio, so just check if anything is outdated or maybe you just need to do a general update. Maybe you can write a better bio am or how about the banners that you're using on Facebook or on your Twitter profiles and so on. Do you need to change any of them or do you need to update some of it?

Autumn (37m 47s): It's just a good best practice to get done at the beginning of the year. Get a fresh face for the new year. That could be misunderstood, but no, that's a really good point. Those are things that people tend to forget. Just like when I think of like updating your website or updating your manuscripts, you have to also go update the places like book funnel and story origins, places where you have your book files uploaded too. So that's another thing is sometimes it's easy to make sure you uploaded something and updated something on Amazon.

But some of those places where your readers go like book funnel or you're being a reader is you know, they have access to some of your other stuff. Make sure that those are updated to, Hmm,

Jesper (38m 30s): I have one more thing on my list. Uh, how was your list looking at?

Autumn (38m 33s): No, I think I'm pretty well up actually.

Jesper (38m 37s): Okay. I have one more and it's about saving money. So this is probably pretty important. I want to hear this sounds super important. Yeah, that's on already. Yeah. So I would say review your last year's invoices that you received and paid and just check if you have any ongoing subscriptions for some services that you aren't actually using anymore. That was a good, because you might as well just go ahead and cancel them if you're not using them and save yourself some money.

But it actually happens more often than you think that you have something on automatic payment for some subscription for something and you're not even thinking about it. Maybe it's just like $10 a month so you don't really notice it, but they just subtract $10 a month and uh, it's just a waste of buddy. Right. So just go and check that and uh, yeah, that's good. Good idea.

Autumn (39m 31s): Very good idea. And sometimes it's really important to, uh, check at least a couple full months because I know my husband and I had, were both subscribed to something and we thought it was one subscription, but there was one slight difference of the email. We are getting double charged so places are sneaky. They gave us a refund, thank goodness. But okay. I was just about to ask, did they do that on purpose? No, no. They were very honest about, they were very nice about it. But yeah, you've got to watch some times, you know, you get a family and family accounts, little things like that can happen and creep up and costs you what seems like not much, but boy, $10 even a month adds up really quick by the end of the year.

120.

Jesper (40m 12s): Yeah. I had even worst layer while this was probably like a year ago or something. All of the, uh, I was, I was in my, uh, net banking, just checking my, my account status and and then I was thinking like, this just seems to be missing some money in these accounts. I don't understand why. And what, what is going on? And then I started going through all of it and then, um, I S I started that we were missing like three and a half thousand dollars on the counters. Like what's lies?

And it was less and it was, yeah. And then I clicked into the details of it and I could see there was some sort of, you know, building what, what is, what is it called? Like, you know, these big stores where you can buy building materials and in the U K so was, yeah. So I was like, how, what? So of course I called the bank and I said, well this is a mistake. I mean, first of all, I do not live in the UK and I do not buy building materials in the UK.

Yeah. So they said, yeah, yeah, just a, you know, there was like a function inside the net banking where you can click that this is not a, you know, this is not me spending this money and whatnot. So he said, yeah, just click that and send it in. We'll have a look at it. But I was quite nervous because it was a lot of money. So I asked him, but does it make a difference what I put in, you know, do I need to write something special to make sure you get the money back? But of course he didn't want to say that. He just said, no, no, you just write honestly and then we'll look at it. Cause of course he didn't want to tell me what to write.

So I submitted it and I was a bit nervous. But like two or three days later the bank returned the money. Oh. So, so that was good. But it was, it was a bit scary. It was all quite a lot of money. That is a lot of money and it's easy, easy to have happen to either stuff goes into the wrong account. Those numbers all means staff or someone swipes your card. So yeah, it must have been something like, I have no idea when it's happened. I mean I, I did travel to London on a frequent basis at the time, but I have no idea when, when somebody must have done something.

But, ah, but anyway, that's history now. But yeah, so I think as you can hear people, there's a lot of things you could do at the beginning of the year to set yourself up for success. And hopefully we mentioned some stuff in this episode that maybe you hadn't thought about yourself. At least that was the aim, wasn't it? Yes, it was. And have you haven't, you know, let us know on the in the comments if there's anything else that you hadn't heard of before or anything else you think would be a good tip for folks. All right, so next Monday we're going to give you six different streams of income for authors might serve well as yet more integration on how you can diverse your income.

Narrator (42m 57s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 54 – Would Scrivener Help Your Writing?

If you are a writer and hang out online, you've probably heard of Scrivener.

Why do the authors who use it love it so much?

Join Jesper and Autumn as they break down why they use this writing software, the benefits they've found in their writing, and the features they love.

You may be surprised at how much one platform can help your writing!

Check out the tutorial video on Scrivener and see if it is right for you at https://www.literatureandlatte.com/learn-and-support/video-tutorials?os=macOS

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self-published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper and I'm Autumn. This is episode 54 of the amwritingfantasy and we are going to talk about Scrivener today and explore if it is the best book writing software out there. But first, this is the first episode of 2020 yes, I still cannot believe it.

Autumn (54s): We're time traveling. We're recording again 19 2019 but still it is really exciting to think that when our listeners are going to hear this, it's a whole new here. It is so happy to, yes, everybody. Yay. I wa I, I hope that you had a wonderful holiday and that the your getting ready to begin another year of writing now. Yes. And that's kinda like a hint of what our next episode's going to be at is making sure you do have a good year, but let's just hang out and have them talk about writing and Scrivener and kind of fun stuff this time.

Yeah. Yeah. So how have you, how has, how has your week been? Autumn good. It's actually, I was telling you earlier that they didn't get to elicit into our secret conversations before we start recording. But my husband and my dog are off on an adventure picking up some stuff in Maine. And I honestly cannot remember the last time. I didn't at least have, you know, my fuzzy little dog at my feet when I came home or need to walk him or feed him. It's like every time I go in like get a dirty dish or have a piece of cheese, you know, I always am one of those people who always have like a little piece I set aside for the dog and I'm like, Oh, he's not here.

So it's, it's freeing. I don't have to worry about it. So I'm going to spend the whole evening like totally 110% immersed in work. I'll probably totally don't even look at the time it, it'll be 11 o'clock I'm like, Oh crap, I have to get up tomorrow. But it's also just really weird because I mean having the dog, how you even mentioning, you know, exercise and stuff. When we were talking earlier that would be, you know, I have to get out, I have to do this, I have to make sure the dog is fed. It kind of sets a rhythm to your life and your evening. And once that gets off track because like, Oh, I don't have to go for a walk but I just want, I should go for a walk but I don't have to go for a walk.

Which is probably good because it is pouring down rain here on top of the 30 inches of snow. So I don't know if I really wanted to go for a walk, you know, I can see that. But do you think with the dog is also that it forces

Jesper (3m 0s): you to get off, you know, away from the computer and get go out walking a bit and whatnot and it's so easy to forget unless you have a reason to go out. Right, exactly. I think am yeah,

Autumn (3m 11s): it's, it pulls you away, reminds you that life is not about, you know, just producing stuff online or writing 24, seven. Uh, sometimes my husband is much more patient than he should be am in reminding me that I need to do things other than sit on the computer, but the dog has never a patient, he lets you know and he's got to go out. So I appreciate the distractions as much as sometimes you, you know, as adults, I'm sure P P of parents and stuff, they, they know they need to spend time with their kids, but there's always that like, Oh, just one more minute, one more.

Nope, Nope. The dog is going to go on the floor if I do not get my butt to the door. So, yeah, exactly. It's a good, that's very helpful. It really puts things in perspective.

Jesper (3m 54s): Yeah, absolutely. How has your week been? Uh, it's been good. You know. Um, I wanted to shout a lot. Started watching his document

Autumn (4m 4s): Cheerio's on HBO. Is it good? I want to start that. That's like one of the next ones on my list.

Jesper (4m 10s): Yeah. Well, Hmm. I've heard such things. Yeah. Well I decided to give it a try just because it is fantasy you know, so I thought, well I better, what's it like recent enough? Right, right. Um, and I understand that it's eight episodes long, the season one and I'm halfway through it, but honestly I cannot quite work out what I think about surprising. Yeah. But it's like, you know, on one hand that the star telling is good, the cinematics are really excellent, you know, it's where we very well made and the fantasy elements are also pretty solid too.

You know, there's something with a parallel universe going on and all that. That's pretty cool. Um, but on the other hand, eh, the main character is a child, so it has to sort of youth vibe to it. And I'm a quite, I'm actually quite not sure if if it is supposed to be for a younger audience or not, I cannot quite work that out. Um, and then I'll end it with this. This is just a small detail, but this is just me being picky. Right.

But then the one of the factions in there, they called the gypsy am.

Autumn (5m 25s): Oh, isn't that just a bit too light too? Like, well, I can't imagine what you might have faced. Those people are, yeah, exactly.

Jesper (5m 34s): Yeah, exactly. And they also like a traveling around, but that just use boats in this universe in instead of a, what is it, like a horses and whatnot. But yeah, I dunno. Oh, okay. Fair enough. That's just me being picky.

Autumn (5m 50s): That's just for like, that could be a bit more original. Right. All right, well I'll be interesting. I haven't watched that one. But you remember I had started the dark cause I was so excited. And I love those, you know, they're those puppets that were created by am, Brian Froud, you know, he's one of my favorite artists and I just could not get into the new version and I don't know, maybe I'll eventually I have you have a free night. My husband won't be like, what are we watching? So maybe I'll try another 1:00 AM and get back into it and see if I can, I can get beyond that first additional hurdle of this is just not jiving with me and I'd rather see an animated then as a puppets.

Jesper (6m 30s): Yeah, I don't, I dunno. I mean I actually, what's the, what's that one all the way through? Um, it's not like the best thing I ever watched, but, but it's quite okay. I think. Um, I'm also gonna watch his dark materials all the way through. I, uh, you know, I'm halfway through the season anyways, so I'm going to watch all of it. But I would say it's definitely worth of watch, you know, for people to make up their own mind. I just cannot work out if I, if I basically like it or not, but, but I would not say it's not like you shouldn't watch it for sure.

That's cool. I'll have to give it a try myself and let you know. Oh, we go on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast so I found a, a question that Larry posted in the amwritingfantasy Facebook. I just talked to mentioned that because maybe, maybe you and I could just give our reflection on it as well. Autumn yeah, I'm thinking. Oh, happily. Yeah. So he said, my main character seems human in appearance with the exception of his brimstone colored eyes, but he's actually half human, half demon created for one purpose to save his mother from captivity because of this, he does not have normal human emotions.

Basically. He has no interest in sex or companionship of any kind. And then he asks, can a cow to still be compelling without an element of sexual tension?

Autumn (7m 60s): Oh, I like this question. Yeah. And I was pretty good. I would say I have a definite answer there. And that's yes, because I had, I go through phases where I actually get annoyed that it seems like every subplot in every story is romance. I remember writing my first, uh, one of my novels and getting to some point where I could have made that choice and gone more towards a romance and stopping and thinking, you know, is this is fantasy is this, you know, romantic fantasy?

Is this like Epic? Fantasy? I mean, can they just be friends? And they ended up becoming the bestest of friends because that's the way I decided to go because not every male female pair up has to be a pair up. So I don't think you need to have that little play off of sexual attention. And actually you could probably do some amazing humor where character just doesn't get it. Someone's flirting with him and he's like, are you squinting? Did you get something in UI?

I think I would find that so hilarious and refreshing, but of course, I'm not everyone else.

Jesper (9m 11s): Do you think? No, no, I agree. I don't think you need it. It's not like you have to have, um, sexual tension or companionship or our romance and that sort of thing for a story to work off our character work for sure. Not, uh, that set of course there is a reason why it's used so much because as human beings we do relate to it. So, uh, but in terms of the question whether or not it has to be so for the couch to work, uh, certainly not, you know, there's a lot of things you could do to make the character compelling and just the fact that he's half demon and he, he has no normal human emotions that that alone can be pretty compelling.

You know, if you, yeah, I don't know, use something like autumn just suggested there. I mean there, there was, you can create some pretty funny and I dunno, maybe not intense but, but interesting situations at least. Uh, playing off of that. Um, and also I, you know, we have, uh, we are in the character creation process for our next am fantasy series. And, uh, our main character, well he has human emotions but, but we also sort of went down the route of saying that, um, he's, he's like logical and honest to a fault.

So basically he's like social skills are lacking and uh, he doesn't really understand that, uh, how other people's work, how other people work. And I think we, we actually speculated that maybe he, maybe he's uh, he's suffering from some sort of illness or something, didn't we?

Autumn (10m 52s): We did. And that's what I was actually going to say just because romance motivates a large portion of the society. There are still folks who are asexual or like how we're hinting at like autistic or Asperger's. There's, there are a lot of people out there and they like to read fantasy too. And almost everyone, you know, know someone like that if they just stop and think. And so just sort of like how the first am romances that were the same sex began to filter into fantasy.

I know some of the first stories I ever read made me question what was considered normal. Go ahead. Make people question what is considered normal. Go ahead and put a, I love reading books where a disability even, you know, missing limb or can't move a certain way. I like seeing that in writing because that is life and it is a rich tapestry. And so yeah, do something a little different. That is more than fine.

Jesper (11m 51s): Yeah. And of course, so for those, if you want to join the most awesome Facebook group for fantasy authors, then just search for amwritingfantasy in the group section of Facebook.

Autumn (12m 9s): So we're going to talk about Scrivener Scrivener say Scrivener shrimp now or Scrivener I say Scrivener Scrivener yes. Different pronunciation in England. But I think that is from what are bearing for Danish people like me, that can be a lot of different populations. And who's to say what's right or wrong, you know? Yes. But maybe we should start out by, so what is Scrivener that's true.

So this is a software program that was originally am back base, but I think it's on PC because you use it and you have a PC. So yeah. Why it's gone from Mac to PC. And I say I've been launched now that you can get it on iPads, which is, so it's a smaller, it's like Scrivener light, but it's a software program that is featured for authors but not just authors. They feature it for screenwriters, even really big reports and basically they're really talking about, it is a different way of writing and organizing because that is really, its strong suit is the way you can navigate, organize, split the screen, having note features.

There's nothing, there's a lot of things that do something similar, but there's nothing else quite like it on the market, especially not for the price that Scrivener still is, which blew me away the first time I looked up the price. I'm like, no. Okay. By the Ching. Um, it was an instant decision when I saw how expensive it was, which means hint, hint, it's not expensive at all. Please Scrivener if you're listening to those who own the software, don't raise the price because that is one of the most amazing things, um, about it.

And it just gets better from there. But I guess I don't want to wrap up the entire show in just 10 seconds there. No, we can, we can talk a bit about the, I checked the pricing as well, so we can share the actual numbers, but by the end of it, um, but I, I think I actually sort of listed, I

Jesper (14m 15s): listed out some of the features that you're going to get in Scrivener so maybe we could, we could sort of go through some features I'm sure. But I would also say that Scrivener it's, it's not really like a word processor processor as such because it's, it's more like a piece of software that helps you with writing. It's like S, you know, a tool that support the novel writing process because it does not really focused much on things like fonts and line spacing and all of that stuff that you normally get in a word processor process.

I mean, you could do all of those things. It's not that good at it and it's not what it's intended for. So, so I think that the unique features are much more interesting to talk about. Um, and maybe also just as a disclaimer here at the top, uh, uh, before we get into all of this, uh, we should probably mention that we are not affiliated with Scrivener in any way. So we are only sharing details about the software here in this episode because we want to be well, informative, informative, and help you out.

Uh, and nothing really else. I mean, we're not, we're not earning any money from,

Autumn (15m 24s): from talking about Scrivener in any way. So, uh, just know that yes, it's just because it is a good tool and it's changed my writing process. And actually that's what I wanted to mention first before we get into the tools. I don't know if you have a story of how you ended up with Scrivener, but for me, I was in book five of my series and up until that point I'd been writing and pages and mostly actually on my iPad, but occasionally I'd write in pages because it would sync with my Mac and I was stuck.

I was so lost book five out of a series. I had a lot of characters am we've talked about that before. We're not going to talk about how many characters, it's not game of Thrones big, but there's a lot of characters and a lot of POV in my story. And there was all these turning subplots and things I've had to work out. And there were threads from the first series are going into the second series and it was so big, I actually just couldn't wrap my mind around it. I could navigate through the pages document to figure out when the last time this person had talked in what was going on.

And then I had heard about Scrivener and I went and looked at it and they have this amazing setup that you see right on the left hand side where you can write by scenes or by chapters and you can split your screen and you can jump between things and see the last thing that happened. And I thought, okay, that's it. I'm buying it. So she was, like I said, when I saw the price tag and it completely saved my life and saved the book because I could organize all those subplots. I could color characters. Um, so when I looked at the overview display, I could see how often their point of view popped up, make sure threads weren't dropped and if I had re if I hadn't changed, I don't know if I'd ever make it through book five or at least not the way I managed to in book six.

The wrap up of the series was even bigger and it was not effortless, but it, it was perfect for Scrivener. So if you are a complicated writer, if you like subplots if you, if you need that extra help of organizing, that is really to me what this tool just shines for of creating a working environment where you can organize your thoughts, organize your plots. I know I'll do all my plotting, my world building, my character layout, everything is in one place, one document and I can get all to all of it very quickly with just fluidly without losing my spot and my writing, which is fantastic.

Jesper (17m 52s): Yeah. I'm trying to think back on when I got Scrivener software, but I think I actually got it very, very early on. Uh, I probably read something about it or seen somebody talking about it on YouTube or something. I'm not quite sure. But I do remember before, well what sort of pushed me over the edge to actually acquire a Scrivener was that I started writing, my first book was actually a nonfiction book on, on mapmaking.

And it's not even that long a book, but I was writing it in word and it did not take long before I got really annoyed with all the scrolling back and forth in this document trying to find things. And it was just so annoying. At some point, I just don't know. Let me look at the Scrivener stuff and yeah, as we said, we're going to come back to, but I just like this is a no brainer.

Autumn (18m 49s): Yeah, exactly. All right. So we put both came there because it really helps organize. So obviously that's one of the things why it does. So what are the other tools that you think people need to know or how it organizes for people?

Jesper (19m 6s): Yeah, maybe first auntie, how we'd organize this because well, as you just said, you know, you have the menu items if I don't know if we can call it menu items, but you, you're basically in the left hand side of the screen. You can sort of build up your own structure of all the, uh, all the chapters in the book. But I think what is really nice is also how you can basically use simple drag dragon drop techniques to reorganize things as much as you please. Um, and you can have the research notes, uh, and you can have them display it for easy reference when you're inside writing a chapter of it.

It's just that alone is amazing to me.

Autumn (19m 43s): Yes. And I do, do you use, so there's also, so that's the left screen is this menu in the middle. The biggest area is your writing screen, which can also be split, like we've hinted, so you can have your writing in one, one area and something you're referring to in the second area. And then on the right, there's usually, there's a few different like tabs that you can go through. But the primary display is usually a little note section and then there's like a little synopsis section and the synopsis one is neat because it tells you if you have it in there.

It also puts it in this overview display. So if you go and look at all your chapters, if you have plotted them out, you can actually see how the flow is going and where they are. You know, whatever notes you put their show up there. And then if I'm writing something I'm like, Oh, you know, fix this. Or you know, add in these notes or remember about this, there's this, I love having a little note feature that I can just be like, okay, plot these ideas that I don't want to forget that I need to keep my mind on. Or if like I spell some characters name, I'm like, I'm going to have to remember that.

It's like I put the spelling there so that I can look it up really quickly later. And I lost an ad. There's some dropdown menus too at the bottom and you can, you know, one of them's like first draft, second draft, third draft, which I do use that as I go through in my edits. And then there's another one that's like to do, if he doesn't, it feel weird things you can add to it, but you can actually change that one to my characters, my POV characters. And then I am label those as well so that when I go to that overview, I see my plotting, what characters voice it's in any, you can see if it's been, you know, edited or written or needs to be written.

It's like boom, I know where I am in my story.

Jesper (21m 24s): Yeah, that's wonderful. I think I went thought of kind of through an evolution, I guess with how I used it because initially, initially I started out by having that synopsis. So one the right hand side as well. So I would have liked some bullet points about what's supposed to happen in this chapter. Um, and then I would write like that. And then after a while, well, this was when I wrote my first fiction novel, so I wrote like half the novel in this way. And then I figured out off halfway through the novel, like, like I have no clue where I'm going.

So I ended up having to delete the whole thing and I said, this is not working. Uh, so I went back to the drawing board and then I did a detailed outline, uh, which then, well, that's what I've done ever since, to be honest, are still doing very detailed outline. So I know exactly what's going to happen and I know that I'm not gonna end up in a ditch somewhere 50, 25,000 words in or something. Um, so once I had done that, then I basically stopped using the right hand side, the synopsis field, because I had, well, the detailed am print out.

Basically you have the outline on a chapter by chapter basis. But then, then I found it started to become distracting to have all those other views on the screen when I was writing. So I actually used the feature where you can black out the entire screen in except the area where you're writing. And then I have the printout of the chapter outline on the table beside me and then I was just right. Um, and then again later on then I started dictating. So now I don't even do that anymore. So it's been a bit of an evolution.

Autumn (23m 8s): That's right. And we still have to talk. I've been trying my hand at dictating but I still have to say right now I prefer writing. It just makes more sense what I visually see it and yeah, I mean my outline, I usually go, I figured out how many chapters the book is going to be based on how my normal chapter word count and how long I want the story to be. And I then break it down and put my synopsis and all my notes right in Scrivener and it's all there with me, which is probably one reason I'm having such a hard time breaking away and I'm not using Scrivener but trying to do it through like dictation because everything is just right there and it makes me feel and fuzzy.

Jesper (23m 47s): Mmm. Yeah. Well it is a different process and of course you would need to get used to it but I don't know this, it's the second time we've talked about dictation so maybe we need to record an episode or something.

Autumn (23m 59s): And so part of Scrivener I mean we can talk about, there's some compilation things that are pretty nifty as well as can be a headache if you, you get too into the thick of them. But one of the things I like is that it actually has some really cool templates for like character sheets and it has a spot where if you're doing, if you go and find images for like your world-building. For me it's like I make maps and I have actually just dropped my maps right into the same file. And Scrivener and I keep all my novels. If I'm writing a series, which of course I'm always writing, I'm a fantasy writer of course I'm writing a series.

I do it by the series names. So like the one I have going now is the Kellett Ray. Um, I have it as a series and I have each of the folders as a different book. And so they're all together. They're all in one spot. I mean, seriously, I went from pages where we talked about, you know, scrolling and try to find where you bookmark something and going ahead to slipping to different documents to literally just being able to go into the same document. And it's all a navigation technique right there on the left. And I've originally didn't use the character sheet templates that came with Scrivener and then I accidentally opened, created one.

I'm like, Oh darn, these are actually really good. I've modified it a little bit to put in character arc as well. And you know, mention if their POV. But besides that it's really useful.

Jesper (25m 22s): Yeah, no, I, I love how you have this dedicated area in such Scrivener where you can dump in those images as you say on maps or even web pages you can dump in there as well. I think it's, it's really, really neat. You know, you have everything you need in one place and uh, you don't have to jump around a different documents or get too distracted and, and whatnot. You know, it's, it's, yeah, it doesn't get any easier than this basically.

Autumn (25m 50s): No, especially now. They've recently, within the last year, they created a special compilation. So that's when you take all your active files, your book files, all your chapters or scenes or however you write and you spit it out into a whole document instead of all these separate little individual folders where they existed. Scrivener and you know, before you could do a word doc, you could do all these times, it is set up that you can do it as a paperback if you know what you're doing. But they just created one that if you use vellum, it spits it out into a format that velum really takes two very, very well.

And so suddenly, yeah, it's just cause I do use vellum and I drop it in development. Boom. Everything again is like the chapters. Everything is there and looks neat and it's formatted perfectly and only step in between is I need to have the editor look at it first. So I tell him not to change the formatting at all. Right. When do you think that's only for the Mac version? I don't know. I didn't check since vellum is only on max, isn't it? I can't remember. Yeah, it is. Yeah.

I just, I dunno, I have not checked to be honest, but I don't think I have a compile feature in my windows version of Scrivener where I can output a vellum something. I don't think I have that. I think that's because a few, about a year ago when they created this version, you had an upgrade and I think that cost am another like $10 something ridiculously cheap. And so I went ahead and paid for this very new different software. They're going to keep both versions sort of alive, but this is there.

If you went and bought it today you would get this version with the compilation but I might think that was only the Mac version because I don't recall either that I've ever received an email from Scrivener about upgrading anything. So that's interesting. I mean I could be wrong but I think that might be the case. Well we'll have to have, if anyone who is listening has knows the answer it just drop it into the comments where you're listing and let us know if you see the compile for vellum in your version and what version that is so that way we can kind of get a tally going.

Yeah indeed. But I think it's worth mentioning as well that unless you are using something like vellum and unless you are outputting a disorder of special format or whatever, we want to call it two to then use vellum afterwards. Please know that Scrivener is not the strongest at formatting. So I would not advise you to output the work because you cannot put it in an ebook format from Scrivener direct you can, but I would not advise you to do that and then just proceed straight away to upload that onto the online retailers like Amazon, whatnot because it's just likely that it's not going to look very pretty.

Uh, and actually back in episode 46 so just a few episodes back, we talked about ebook formatic essentially. So I recommend and listen to that episode it for further details on formatting, but, but just be aware that Scrivener is not that good at this stuff. No, you're not going to be having your eBooks with drop caps and some other, the amazing things that you can do in some of the dedicated formatters for your books. But it does work. It has a nice output if you're doing screen writing and you're sending it on to someone to read as a cause.

Screenwriting for whatever reason is still the weirdest, most archaic, um, output format I've ever seen. And they have a few that are more standard that if you're going to be sending it to a publisher, they would probably recognize it, recognize it, but there's nothing really super pretty that you want to send out to your readers and expect them to be paying some, you know, high price money. For mm mm. Another feature I thought of that I want to mention because I quite like it and that does how you can track your progress progress to keep yourself motivated.

And I quite liked that, you know, uh,

Jesper (29m 43s): there was the two different ways at least maybe you have another one as well. I don't know autumn but at least I have seen or can remember, I shouldn't say two different ways of working. Uh, the first one is, uh, to add a different label to each section of your document. And you could, for instance, color code, the ones that are completed in green, and then you can add a column to displays to display that label in the Scrivener outline basically. So that gives you at a glance, you can see how far you've come and you can see all the chapters that is already complete.

Um, another way of tracking it, and probably I like this one better, is to set yourself a word count target and then script note scribbled over. Not only allow you to track the word count. So let's say you set it for 100,000 words for example, then Scrivener we'll track how you progress towards that goal. And I really liked that feature because it keeps you on track and it shows you in a visual layout how far you come. So I really liked that. And I think again, that might be a difference between the Mac version and the windows version here because I T.H.E.

I know in Mac you can set your yourself daily word count goals. Yes, you can. And if I'm not mistaking, I think that was enabled in the windows version and one of the later updates that came, but I don't remember anymore because again, I'm dictating nowadays so I don't use that feature anymore. But I really liked it when I was writing directly into Scrivener. Uh, and I think it is, it does allow your daily word count goals in, in windows, but I'm a bit fussy on that one. Yeah, I think,

Autumn (31m 21s): I think you're right that they did update it, but it's definitely in the Mac version where you can have an overall project goal. You can have a writing session goal and that you can also have a chapter goals. So that really breaks it down if you like, you know, you know, you're writing 2000 words or 3000 words is your what you want for this chapter. And you can have a little bit of a buffer, like as long as you hit, if you're writing 2000 but as long as you hit 1500 you're good. And if you go over 2300, you know, you wanted to tell you, Hey, this is getting a little long.

Are you sure you want to be dedicating this much, you know, space to this one chapter and it'll, you know, it gives you color coding, it tells you, it'll give you updates and notifications. So, yeah, it definitely does make you feel good though. I do laugh because I remember seeing someone figured out that copying and pasting can add and subtract to your word count goal for the day. So if you happen to paste in a whole bunch of stuff, it's like, Hey, you did it. You're like, Oh no.

It's words going on the page. But it does deduct. So if you delete you, you paste, you take something out, you cut it, it will take it off your word count goal for the day too. So you gotta watch that, right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You need to be a bit careful, dad. It's not a hundred percent perfect. Yeah. You could write a lot and then take it and paste it into another document and it's going to be like, nah, he didn't make it.

Jesper (32m 45s): Right. Right. Okay. Do we have more features we want to mention? Autumn

Autumn (32m 51s): I can't think of anything else specifically. I did just find out, found out last night when I was am compiling a book actually, that it does now have, it'll compile an outline, which I had noticed and that was very useful to be sending off to my editor to be able to add out the chapter outline and this is what it's gonna look like because I hadn't really worried about like a table of contents before, but it does do that as well. And there's a lot of other features that are in there that it's very, I never truly finished the tutorial.

I kind of got enough then then started poking around and started writing cause I was in the middle level book and I just wanted to get back to it and see if I could get it organized. So maybe one of these days I'll actually take the whole tutorial. Um, I hear that there's a lot of great things in there.

Jesper (33m 39s): Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean I will add a link to the show notes where you can actually see the tutorial videos for Scrivener. So if you want to a visual view of all the stuff we just, we've been talking about here, then yeah, check that link and go and have a look at you. Look at it yourself. But maybe I should get into some of the pricing stuff then do you think?

Autumn (33m 59s): I think so. I think we should let people know what they're in for if they go and look at this software. Um, and I think you'll be really surprised considering, I think we've done a pretty good job at explaining that this is a really powerful piece of organizing for something like a novel or screenplays. So it's, to me it's a really sophisticated piece of software. And I know when I went to look at it, I'm thinking, yeah, it's going to be a couple hundred bucks and I'm just going to be like, yeah, put that on my wishlist.

So I've checked it out. I was like healing.

Jesper (34m 36s): That's the thing, right? I mean, as we talked about, it's available for Mac windows and also iOS asthma, uh, autumn mentioned in the beginning. So if you have those, it will sink your work onto each of your devices. Uh, the Mac and the windows version costs $45. I believe that it's sorta, it's insane is I just, and I believe as well that if you're a student, you're getting a small discount even on those 45. Yeah, I think so. And there are times that they have coupons out, which I didn't wait for it because it's $45.

It's amazing just to get it. It's not like nothing. The iOS version, um, cost $20 or 1999, uh, and if you are planning to run Scrivener on both Mac and windows, then you need to purchase both versions. So you cannot use the same on both of those, uh, different OMS systems. But you do get a discount of $15 if that's what you're going to do. So, which is super sweet of, and I will tell you

Autumn (35m 38s): this to me, one of the most phenomenal things is the file it outputs is a dot Scrivener file that is a dot script file. It doesn't matter if you're a Mac or a PC. You deserve. You drop your dot Scrivener file to Dropbox and you share it with your editor or your beta reader who can download a dot script file. It doesn't matter if they're using a PC or a Mac. And that just blows my mind. I just why do another software. I'm so tired since I'm a Mac user, I'm spitting stuff out two pages and Excel all the time because my Mac can read them.

But you know when I send them to you, yes, for the your your PC cannot read. You know, my pages files in my numbers files, so I have to always transcribe them and translate them. But Scrivener no, we're good. We can share files. I think that is fantastic.

Jesper (36m 32s): Absolutely. And also remember that you're only paying one, so Scrivener is not doing some of the Microsoft tricks on you where they want you to pay monthly subscriptions and all that crap for to use the software. So you pay once and that's it. You have the Scrivener for life. And I would even say even further than that, what is really, really awesome, I really liked that is that their trial period is not a 30 days of the calendar days. Like, like what you normally see, but it's 30 days actual use.

So Scrivener tracks how many days you had opened it. And so if, for example, if you want to write today, you download the trial, you write one day, and then let's say you're busy for the next two weeks and then you open it again, you only used two days of your trial for that, then uh, so those two weeks where you were busy doing other things, it does not count against your trial period. So, so that's really awesome and it just gives you an excellent way that you can just play around with Scrivener and see if it fits your needs before you actually make any, any purchase.

But even that said, it's not expensive. Right. So,

Autumn (37m 38s): I mean, yeah, I think I just really think that the, this company, and I keep forgetting who is the actual owner of Scrivener and producer, but they've gotta be one of the most decent, not out to gouge you or anything. They really, you know, even that they give you a discount if you have to buy it for your PC and your Mac because you're a two type of computer household. That's just nice. I can't say that about some companies if they're just really nice.

Jesper (38m 7s): It's called literature and latte, the ones who make Scrivener. So, uh, that's, that's pretty cool. All right. But, uh, at least in my view, Scrivener is well worth it and am go and check it out if you want. So if this interest piqued your interest, uh, have fun with that. And now that we've got 20, 20 started autumn and I will be back next Monday with advice on some best practices for the next year. Just heard there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast.

Narrator (38m 37s): Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating. And review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 53 – How to use read-through to REVOLUTIONIZE your series sales (with Adam Croft)

In this last episode of 2019, Jesper talks to Adam Croft.

Adam is one of the most successful indie authors in the world.

Having sold more than two million books, he earns seven figures a year as an author.

The concept of read-through is explained.

We cover why it’s important? How to calculate it? And how it could revolutionize the sales of your book series?

As a special for the Am Writing Fantasy audience, Adam is offering a LIFE-TIME discount on 50% on ALL of his author courses.

The discount code is AMWRITINGFANTASY and the courses can be found at: https://courses.indieauthormindset.com.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self-published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper and this is episode 53 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and today I've got something special for you while Adam is away because Adam Croft has agreed to join me today to discuss, read through. And while autumn and I have talked about the importance of writing in series before, we've never really covered, read through in more depth. So Adam and I are going to look into why it is important, how it could revolutionize your series sales and how to calculate it.

So Adam is a seven figure author and assault more than 2 million books. He is one of the most successful indie authors in the world and he has been featured on BBC television and radio together with many other media outlets. So as you can here, we've got some real expert advice from you to uh, for this final podcast episode of 2019. So I think we're going to close out with a bang here. So welcome to the amwritingfantasy podcast Adam thank you very much for having me.

Yeah, so I just said, you know, I said just set the, when people hear this, we actually at the 30th of December, but we are recording willing in advance and tie in advance of time and we only at the end of November at the moment. So I don't quite feel the Christmas spirit yet, but I don't know about you as well. Yeah. Happy new year to everybody. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Adam (1m 59s): Yeah. I hope no major events happen in the next month that we're obviously not going to be able to reference.

Jesper (2m 5s): No, exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's just here in in in Denmark or there was no snow yet, and it's just raining and it's, it's a bit like a, it's a bit like boring autumn weather, but, uh, yeah, not, not much of Christmas feeling yet, but hopefully it'll come over the next coming years.

Adam (2m 21s): England is very much the same. Um, but in terms of the Christmas feeling, we're getting there. My son will be three in February. So yesterday we went to visit Santa and am. Yeah, we came home, put some Christmas music on and things like that. So you have to try and get into the spirit. We have to have to do a little bit earlier than we might otherwise because he's only small and he, he enjoys getting into it. But, um, yeah, Christmas spirit is, is growing here, I would say.

Jesper (2m 47s): Yeah. Yeah. They've started decorating some of the shops here, but I have not seen any sensors around yet though. They've all been over here. That's why he's not made his way past that Mark. Yeah. Yeah. All right. But, uh, we're gonna talk some read through stuff here today, but I actually, I was thinking Adam am because I also saw the, the book, the nonfiction book you wrote, the indieauthormindset and I know that you always talk a lot about taking the longterm view on your author career rather than focusing on short term gains.

And I really liked that because that's always what I advocate as well. But I think maybe when we're talking about read through, maybe it's relevant to just touch a bit on that because I think it's important that we don't get to to, you know, tie it up in how do I earn a lot of money, short term or kind of thinking isn't it?

Adam (3m 47s): Yeah, definitely. I'm in route through is um, without a doubt a longterm thing to be considering. It's am but it is vice or for you know, a lot of reasons we will cover and it will give you some, some information, some statistics which will effectively um, inform your advertising and allow you to know straight away when you're looking at an ad, whether it's likely to be prophesying or not in the long term. Um, it is, yeah, it's very much tied into the kind of the analytical business side of things when you're looking at the longterm of publishing and it's about calculating really whether a dollar you spent a day is going to make you back, uh, you know, perhaps five, 10 times that over the course of months or even a couple of years.

Jesper (4m 33s): Yeah, exactly. And and I think as well when we're talking about read too is also about four people, four people to go from reading your book one and onto reading the written at rest of the series. You need to put in the professionalism and do a good job in terms of making sure that the, each of the book, and especially of course that that book one is professional. So that is professionally edited. It has been through all the editing stages in terms of making sure that the plot is there and that there was a good story, does good character arcs and all that good stuff.

But because out of without all of that, I mean if, uh, w I guess what I'm trying to say is that if people go into all the marketing and advertising space here with the mindset of, let me put out some quick books in a quick series here so that I can get some read through and I can earn some money, then I think they would be shooting yourself in the foot.

Adam (5m 29s): It would. And I, I know a fair bit about that. I've been there myself. Um, I mean, I will say to people, yes, you, you do really need at least probably three books out in a series before you're going to start doing any heavy advertising or before you, you know, want to get anywhere near making a profit from that advertising anyway. There's nothing, nothing wrong with getting the name out there and finding those readers, but giving them something to read onto is absolutely vital. Um, and yeah, it, it is the case that you want that book obviously as you do with all your books to be the best they possibly can be.

Um, I fell foul of that myself. I wrote my first book in my series, my main series him, well finished it in 2010 and that came out the first couple of days at 2011. Um, and I wrote the first book of my other series a few weeks later. So at that point I didn't really know how to write. I certainly didn't know how to publish. Um, this was in the early days of the Kindle over here, so it was very much hitting the hope.

The books weren't great. They're still not brilliant. I mean I have revised them since, but I can't, you know, while I would like to do is rewrite them all from, from head to toe. But that's obviously not practical for a number of reasons. So yarn battling that myself. In fact, having fairly low read through, um, on that series because the first couple of books are just so poor.

Jesper (6m 54s): Yeah. Autumn and I also discussed it at one point. I do not recall right now if it was on a podcast episode or if it was just in awe one of our personal conversations. But we did discuss at one point this dilemma of going back and rewriting a book one day. And also it's like, I guess you could say it also depends on how long the series is after that because is it really worth, because it will take quite a lot of effort and is that really worth it? I don't know. I guess,

Adam (7m 21s): well this is a thing. I mean if you've gotten a long ongoing series, then I would say just carry on writing a series. Um, the new books that you write, the more of those you have out, we'll will flood out the poor ones earlier on. I think people expect a series to get better as it goes on and the writer's career to get better as it goes on. Um, and as you say, the amount of time it takes and the benefit that you might get from that. Um, I think it's probably the case that it's not worth doing major revisions. I mean if you go back and there are loads of typos and things and stuff that just doesn't make sense and is, um, is objectively poor am then by all means make some small tweaks.

But I don't think major rewrites are good unless you've got, for example, a very tight trilogy or something like that where one really poor book is going to stand out quite clearly against the other two.

Jesper (8m 11s): So maybe, maybe we actually, we should actually start out by defining what we mean when we say through

Adam (8m 17s): yes, we can try. Um, I mean it is essentially the percentage of readers which will, um, read through your series or read through from one book to another. So, for example, if 100 people buy book one in my series and um, in a similar period of time, 25, we'll buy book two, then I can assume, and I underline and embolden that word, assume that, um, basically a quarter of people who've read book one or who at least who bought book one bread book too, you're not going to get figures that high for a number of reasons, which we'll go into later.

But that would give you a read through percentage of 25%. Um, you'll read through all likely drop the further you get through a series mainly because more people will come in and book one and will not get as far as book too, then won't go as far as book three and so on. Um, but there are a lot of things that can influence readthrough is not necessarily the case that if you've got to read through a 2% or 5%, that doesn't mean that 95 or 98% of people didn't enjoy the book.

Generally speaking, most people who buy the book won't even read it. I mean, I think we all can attest to the fact that the number of books we have on our Kindles or even on our bookcases is, um, infinitely more than the number we've ever read. So most people who buy the book won't read it. Um, people who do buy it, um, some of them won't enjoy it. Most of them probably will. And even those ones who do enjoy it won't necessarily automatically, and I kind of automaton robotic style, go and buy the second one, they might think, Oh yeah, I'll get the second one at some point and then forget about it.

Or they might pop it onto their wishlist and never actually buy it or the doorbell might go while they're in the middle of doing it. So, you know, all of these things will contribute to effectively lowering your read rate. Um, and it, it doesn't matter so much what the read through rate is. It's not really about influencing that number. It's more at calculating it, finding out what it is, and then utilizing that, um, in your advertising and your marketing as a piece of information, which can actually be very helpful to you.

Jesper (10m 43s): Yeah. And I was wondering while you were talking there, do you have any like guidelines or whatever we wanna call it on? So if people calculate their read through rate, I am, I don't know, we haven't really explained how to calculate it, but maybe we can come back to that in a second. But if they do calculate their read through rate, um, do we have any like, guidance or ideas about what, when can they consider like, okay, now I have a, a fairly good read through rate versus this is not good enough, for example. Or do you think it doesn't matter and you, you, you sort of benchmark against yourself more the most?

Or what do you think

Adam (11m 18s): exactly. I think you do benchmark against yourself. I think to a large extent it is what it is. It's not massively, um, influenceable to be honest with you, you can't really influence the readthrough rates too much other than writing a better book. And you know, as I said at the top of the show, we should be writing the best books we can anyway. So, you know, it, it, it's kind of kind of irrelevant really whether the read through rate is good or bad, there isn't anything that is good or is bad. Obviously the higher the better. But I wouldn't be alarmed if you calculate yours and find it coming out at sort of 2%, 5%.

Um, you know, it's not the case. That's, that is a huge failure. It's going to make life more difficult for you of course. Um, because effectively if you're selling, um, a copy of book one and it's costing you more to advertise that than it is the royalty you're making on book one. That's not necessarily the end of the road because the logic is that a percentage of those people will then go and buy book two, book three, so on. If you've got a series of 10 books and if you know who that X percent of people will buy all 10 books, then you know that a sale of book one isn't just worth a sale of book one is worth the sale of book one plus X percent of sales of 10 books, if that makes sense.

So it's about calculating the value of a reader rather than a sale and calculating a read through is about, um, getting that magical number of how likely that person who has bought that book is to become a reader of the series rather than just a purchaser of book one.

Jesper (12m 55s): Yeah. And, and I think, at least from my perspective, I would say, and maybe that was what I was trying to get at us. Well I guess I would say that people shouldn't be scared when they calculate a number because it's going to be much lower than you think. Oh yeah. It's not like a be like, well 70% of people who read my book, one is going to read book two. It's, it's probably not like that.

Adam (13m 15s): Yeah. I mean, 70% of people who bought it won't even read it. So mine like it and get to the end or their Kindle might crash or um, you know, we've all read books by authors that we've loved and we notice more they're in the series, but we still haven't gone out and bought them for whatever reasons. We've just forgotten or, you know, life gets in the way. And that's, that's generally, um, the biggest influence when it comes to books and buying books is that life gets in the way. Um, every time I put a new book up for pre-order for example, I, um, I'll put something in my, my readers group on Facebook's got a couple thousand people in that.

Now I think, and I always put a quick straw poll out and say, in case you've not already bought the book, um, can I just ask why out of interest, you know, is it, is it priced too high? Does the blurb not sounded enticing? Am have you just not got around to it yet? Have you not seen any ads for it or anything like this? As it's the first you've heard of it and overwhelmingly 70, 80, 85% of the am results are that people say they just haven't got round to it yet despite me emailing four or five times or you know, putting things up on Facebook all the time.

It, they just, people are busy, they put us in the back of their minds, they would do it at a later date. Um, and, and that's going to be a case when people have read your book and the only, I'm not just, they get to buy the next one, um, is a mention in the back of the book perhaps or your, your Kindle lawyer, Kobo or whatever it is popping up and saying, actually, do you know there's more books in this series? Would you like to grab them now? If they don't do it then, then they haven't got any more reminders. So you know that it's going to lower the read through rate anyway quite naturally.

Jesper (14m 51s): Yeah, absolutely. And

Adam (14m 52s): then as you say, they are of course, it's a very good idea to put that a link to the next book in the back of the first book so that they can go on straight to am to buy the next one if they like what they just read. And at least it's more likely at that point in time that they will do it right away because there they are right there on the page and the link is staring at them. So that's, of course that's a good trick. Um, but I would also say it, it's, it's, I think, I, I don't remember the exact number, but I read somewhere something like you had to have read, I don't know what, where it was like five, six, seven books, something like that of an author before you, before you actually start remembering the author's name.

Yeah. So, yeah. So that's also what you're battling against. Here's the people just don't remember and e-readers have made that really difficult. Um, well, one area has made that really difficult and that our beloved Kindle, which, um, doesn't give you on the lock screen when your, your Kindle is locks and most of them don't show you, um, the book that you're reading. And then when you unlock your can look, go straight back to the text. So you can't remember the title, you can't remember the author. Um, some of them like I books am we'll show you the covers.

Um, Kobo as well. When you lock your device, the, the front cover is the safe screen. Um, so some of them are better in that regard, but many of the Kindles, um, don't do that. And a lot of people, I, I'm forever getting emails from readers telling me that they loved my latest book X. And I think I've never heard of that book. Um, they're talking about characters of mind that their favorites and I'm thinking they're not mine and I'll, you know, I'll Google them or search on Amazon and find out who did write that and I'll go, Oh yeah, that was by so and so, wasn't it? Yeah. That they are, that was, that was a great series too.

And, you know, try not make them feel too daft about it cause they have taken the time to email me after rule. Um, but yeah, it is phenomenal that people don't know the books they've read. We quite often remember the stories, we remember the characters. Um, but it can take a while. So remember the name of the author or at least the, the title of the books. So, um, yeah, again, this goes back into why creating a strong brand is so important. Um, and why when we're calculating, read through or trying to gain, read through and get rid of us through our series am I think there really does need to be a kind of a fresh approach that I'm not sure what it is yet, but it does need to take these things into account and recognize the fact that the am the world is, it is the ecosystem as it is.

The technology as it is, um, kind of works against us in many ways.

Jesper (17m 24s): Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So maybe could you say maybe some words about how do people actually calculate this stuff then maybe, maybe, maybe that's a good thing to get into.

Adam (17m 34s): Well, this is a difficult thing. Um, I mean I probably should give a few cautionary notes beforehand and it comes to calculating, read through. There are many things that can skew it and can cause some issues. And one of those is Permafree. Um, we mentioned how, you know, few people, sometimes we'll read through from one books to the other and if you've got one but which is permanently free, perhaps your first in series, um, that effect is going to be amplified massively because free books on the whole just don't get red.

Um, people fill their Kindles with them. Um, you know, I've got hundreds of free books on my Kindle. I'm never going to get, get through to reading them all. It's just not gonna happen. But you see one, then you think, well, it's not costing me anything. I might as well grab it and then read it. One, I've got some time in the future and as we all know, um, most of us writers and creators are also procrastinators. We know very well that when we say we'll do something in the future, it's not going to get done. Um, so those books, laundry, you don't get read. The ones that do get read, a huge percentage of those am will be read by people who only get free books.

They know they're on low incomes or don't believe you should pay for books or, or whatever the reason is. Um, they're just not going to go and buy book two because you know, for them, reading is a free thing and that's fine, I guess, but they're, they're not going become longterm readers of yours anyway. So this is why I'm, I'm, I'm kind of on the fence about free. Um, I think it can be helpful in some ways, in some big ways. And that's a, that's a, an episode for another time. Um, but things like that can really skew the data.

Jesper (19m 10s): Yeah. Sorry for interrupting you, but I was just about to inject there because we actually did release a podcast episode like, I don't know, three, four or five episodes back or something like that about PERMA freeze because we also surveyed, um, a lot of our readers and we were asking them different kinds of questions. But what really came out as a conclusion from that? Is that what you just said? Basically because the book is free, people downloaded it ends up on the Kindle, they never read it again.

So our conclusion out of that was actually that we don't think free books are any good anymore because it doesn't help. It's much better to get them to, because we also asked to read those questions about, so we, we ask them questions. If you have got a book for free, do you read it right away or at least right after the one you're currently reading or, or, or what most of them said no, they will get back to it at some point. Which means of course in translation they will never get back to it. No,

Adam (20m 8s): it's free. Does have some uses. I don't think it's a longterm vulnerability. Um, I think, um, it's could for sometimes a quick burst of am visibility, you know, free books will get downloaded more, they'll get seen more, they'll get found more. Um, and also, I don't wanna go too far off piste here, but you can, um, if you've got audio, for example, um, with whisper sync add on enabled, then for example, I'm having a book free for a short period of time to get a BookBub featured deal, um, can actually reach you in a fair bit of cash in audio add on through whisper sync because a lot of audio listeners, when they've run out of there, they're free books for the month or they're included books for the month in their plan.

Um, will download free or cheap Kindle books and then pay an extra couple of dollars for the audio add on. It's a much cheaper way of them doing that. So, um, yeah, there can be some cash we brought in there. But I digress. I like to read that derailing you. Sorry. Oh no, that's fine. It's am, it's a vital point of, of, of this Ray of vital part of calculating retreat, you know, accounting for all of these things. And you know, thinking in terms of being an indie publisher, nothing is a, is a satellite thing.

Everything kind of influences each other. Um, and that does make calculating read through more difficult butts. Um, I'll try and break it down into its most basic parts. Um, it is radically oversimplifying it, but effectively, um, you want to take a period of time, which ideally, and this is where it becomes difficult again, um, gives each book a fair crack of the whip. So for example, if you're taking the last year, um, you've got a five book series and you're taking the last year, um, but book five is only been out for a month, then you're not going to have a full compliment of data there.

Am you might just want to include the last month in, in that case. So you're essentially giving each book a similar amount of time on the market. Um, so you've got a fairly clean data. You also want to make sure that that period of time is as long as it can be to be fair so that you've got, um, the biggest amount of data you can then the data therefore should be truer. So effectively what you ought to do is look at, um, the number of downloads, um, a purchases that each book has had in that period of time and the amount of money at book has made in each period of time.

Um, you're then calculating am for example, I did this in, um, in one of mine, I took am a fairly short time period. Um, I looked at my series and in that period, um, one book of book one sold 518 copies, book two sold 390 book through your 312, but for two 75 and book for a book, five to 40. So yeah, these are just kind of fairly random numbers, but you can see the numbers reduce each time.

Of course, as readers drop off, they forget to buy the next book. They give up on the series, whatever it is. Um, and you're then calculating the percentage that read through, um, from one book to the next. So book two's download numbers are X percent of, but one's book threes are X percent of book twos or whatever. Then gets the end of the series your looking at the number who have got right through to the end compared to the number who have, uh, started the series and looking at what that percentage is, uh, of, of all readers, you know, what percentage got as far book five.

Um, that's the reader you're looking for in a calculation that you're, you're, you're aiming for there. So say for example, you calculate that am 20% of your readers, for example, make the full way through a five book series. Um, you then want to calculate the value of that series. So you've got book one where you might have a royalty of a dollar and say books two, three, four, and five. You've got a royalty of $2 each.

So somebody reading the whole way through the series would earn you $9, but 20% of people read their whole way through the series. So essentially somebody starting book one has a 20% chance of reading through the series and earning you $9. Um, and this time in the morning, I'm not going to try and work out what that is in my head. I think it's about $1 80, something like that. So, um, or is it, let's, let's work that one out. Um, so it's $1 80, so that's, um, Rita wouldn't actually be worth that $1 am to you.

It actually be worth almost twice that. So when you're sending a, uh, you know, advertising a book and you're spending, I don't know, whatever it is on, on advertising that and you're not quite making a profit, in fact, you are, you've probably doubling your money in, you know, just using those numbers that I've, I've plucked completely out of nowhere. Um, so if you know that, that am read through sort of, that reader would earn you that a $1 80 for reading through the whole series, which is is, is pretty low.

It's just a number that I F generated through inventing random ones. Let's face it. Um, then if you also know your conversion rate, um, which you can work out through some funky and manipulation of the Amazon ads, um, uh, dashboard for example, then you can work out what you can spend on an ad. So if you know that you make $1 80 for somebody who reads through the series, um, you know that 10% of people who hit your landing page will convert into a sale, your conversion rate is 10%, then you know that that scent, the scent of that $1 18 means that if you're spending less than 18 cents a click, you're likely to be making a profit across the series.

Um, so essentially it's, it gives you that final piece of data, that final piece of information, um, that will enable you to make a calculation as to looking at an ad and knowing fairly instantly whether it's likely to be profitable and knowing what your benchmarks are for advertising and knowing that you've, you've got that ceiling there and as long as you spend under that, you am you'll be making a long term profit. That's it. I was going to say in shorts when that wasn't very short

Jesper (26m 44s): at no, but I think the main point with with this read through and why it's important to do this in calculation here is because it increases the bar so to speak on how much you can spend on advertising your book. One because if you look at your book one in isolation and you tried to work out, okay, how much can I spend looking at my conversion rate to make sure that I get at least a, let's say a 1% return on investment or something like that.

Then that number will be incredibly much lower on how much you can actually bit on your ads on Amazon for example, on Facebook or wherever you're advertising compared to when you take into account all the revenue you're going to get from the rest of the series. Then you can increase your ad spend and your bidding and basically making sure that you have a fair chance in your ads actually being served. Because if, if you only look at like a two 99, three 99 book one or whatever, or even let's say four 99 when you take away two royalties from that and you take away the conversion rate will will drop you down to let's say it and 10%.

Then you are bidding so low to ensure a positive room at return on investment then that you add, I'll never going to get shown on Amazon anyway.

Adam (28m 3s): That's right. Yeah. I mean I, I looked at, for example, my am, I just found my fingers there while you were talking rather than inventing ones. I thought I'd find the actual figures that I did. A couple book, one in my series at the moment is am at 99 cents and that's a price point on testing there. So I will learn probably about 25 cents, something like that. Um, then you 30 cents for a download of that book for sale of that book, which makes you think, well, actually that's not even worth advertising, but that's theories based on my read through rates.

I've worked out what a, um, you know, a reader, a am that comes across is worth over the lifetime of their, their readership. So for example, I've worked out for each different vendor. Um, and I can see that, for example, a Kindle reader to me, um, in that series is worth six pounds 51. Um, a Kobo reader is worth seven pounds, 10 Apple reader is worth seven pounds 81. Um, so they're, they're actually, it's worth somewhere around the seven pound Mark.

I'm a reader. So whereas it looks as if there's a 20 or 30 P royalty to be made there, that's, that's not the case. Actually getting somebody to, to read that series, it could be worth about seven or eight pounds to me. Um, and that's a, that's a massive, massive difference, um, from, from what you believe that reader is worth. Um, you know, we're not talking about being pennies out here. This is no thousands of percent higher, um, and will make a massive difference to the way that you do your marketing, your advertising. Um, of course you're not gonna see that seven or eight pounds possibly for a couple of years.

Um, but that's a huge, huge, um, and with most businesses not making a profit in the first couple of years anyway. Um, I mean, I would happily talk away am a pound or two if I knew that it was gonna be making me back seven or eight a couple of years later.

Jesper (29m 55s): Yeah, absolutely. And this is where I guess we can tie back to the beginning where we talked about that this is a long term view on, on things, right? It's not, it's not about making a quick buck or something. Um, and it takes, I mean, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I know some people can read a book really quickly, but for me it takes months and months and months just to read one book. So if I'm your reader, it'll take forever.

Adam (30m 19s): Yes. And that's the thing. Now, everybody is different. Um, and there are so many different variables that go into this, which is why having the maximum amount of data we can is, is vital. Um, I mean, for example, if you're a new author, um, you might not have, um, the, the volume of sales and the amount of time behind you to be able to get clean data to calculate this, which is why I think calculating the read through is something that is best done. Um, the more, um, the more you go on, for example, it is something which is worth doing throughout your am author career.

It's worth doing, you know, every few months. And just, um, you know, seeing, um, seeing what your, uh, you'll read through rate is at that point in time because it will change, the data will get cleaner. So it's well worth repeating the exercise.

Jesper (31m 16s): Hmm. Yeah, for sure. I was just wondering as well, so when, or for those people who have their books in Kindle unlimited, I guess that will complicate matters a bit because you will have some people buying the book. You will have other people's pouring the book. Um, so we need to be a bit careful with calculating their, I guess, right?

Adam (31m 39s): Yeah. Uh, yeah, kinda limited does um, does complicate things as well. Um, you'll read through rates will probably be higher, but the competition is also higher and your roti rate will be lower. Um, also doesn't help that the amount you get paid for page reads changes and drops, let's face it every month as well. So that does complicate things. The calculations there are a bit different and an even more complicated. I mean, things like this aren't, aren't difficult to get across in the medium of audio anyway.

It, um, but um, yeah, there is am there is a little something I can do for your listeners to help out there, which we'll we'll cover at the end of the show I'm sure. Um, and yeah, even things like box sets can complicate things because you think, well, okay, somebody reading for example, if you've got a box set of books, one's a three. Is somebody reading book for coming from book three or are they coming from your box out of one to three? Um, also a lot of people read out of order. A very large number of people will read out of order. I'm for rather getting messages on Facebook and emails saying, Oh, I've read these three books of yours.

Which one should I read next? I'm thinking what you've read books two, five and seven out of water. Um, so you don't have, I'm glad you've enjoyed them because that's frankly miraculous. You'd recommend that order. Um, but yeah, people, people do. And it doesn't matter how much you say this is the next book in the series or you have things plastered all over your website, all of your emails. I love your Facebook with all the books in order. Um, you know, people are people, they would just do whatever they want this to be honest with you. So, um, yeah, read through is, um, probably the, the line of best fit.

I would say it's am is the best thing we have at the moment. Um, but when we're dealing with that amount of unpredictability and general human nature, we're never going to get something perfect butts. Um, you know, it, it's better than nothing. Um, which I know is not, um, the best sales message in the world.

Jesper (33m 40s): No, but it's, it's, I think it's more about looking at the big picture here because if, if, if, with the example you were talking about early on, you know, if you know that you are earning like I mean seven, eight, $9 for for, uh, those people from, from one person starting the beginning of the series and when you're taking into account all the drop off and whatnot, you know, but okay, Rita is worth seven, eight, $9. It's, it's not about the seven or the eight or ninth. It's more about understanding the reigns of, OK, so it's, it's, it's around this level that I'm gonna earn.

Uh, let's see. My, my Redis worth around this level of money. I mean, if it's 7.5 or 8.5, that's not going to rock the boat, but it at least it gives you indication on, okay, how much can I approximately bit and still end up profitable in the end? Maybe a couple of years later as you say, but, but I think that's the takeaway, right? That, that you need to, to think it longterm and ms an indicator rather than like an exact number.

Adam (34m 41s): Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's going to be closer then you have beforehand, that's for sure. It's, um, you know, it's not going to be exact. It's not going to be foolproof. Um, but yeah, you will, you will be closer than you, you were otherwise. So it's definitely worth doing. Um, it can really give you, um, some, some excellent insight into what a reader might be worth, which otherwise we're just, we're just guessing. And as you say, the only number we've really got is the royalty that you get from that, um, specific, um, up front sale rather than am from looking at, um, you know, the, the, the whole bigger picture.

Jesper (35m 26s): Yeah, exactly. So, I don't know. Adam is there any things we missed out? Oh, I forgot to ask you about when it comes to read through that as important to covid. I think so. Um, the only thing else I was to mention is the,

Adam (35m 38s): um, as I say, difficult to am to get this through in in audio format. Um, but if it's something that's am listeners or sort of podcast are interested in, I do have a short course, um, on calculating read through, which I'm, I'm, I'm very happy to give your listeners I'm half price access to, um, as an exclusive deal for them.

Jesper (36m 1s): That's great. Yeah. And I will put a link to am to that discount code or link a router in the show notes below. So, uh, for for you, dear listener, if you're interested in checking out Adam's costs on this, uh, you can get that very special amwritingfantasy podcast a discounter her by, by going from that link below. And I think Adam you said that it's not going to expire that link. Is that right? So people can just use it?

Adam (36m 30s): Yeah, that'll be there forever. I think it's, um, uh, courses.indieauthormindset.com I think we get 50% off of all of the courses, but if you go for the, um, the, the read through one, I think the, uh, the code is am am amwritingfantasy am and that will mean that the course actually costs less than $25. So, um, yeah, it makes it makes it a great deal.

Jesper (36m 53s): Oh yeah, absolutely. So I would say go and check that out and uh, we I know we just passed Christmas now, but maybe a late Christmas gift for yourself. Maybe that's an idea.

Adam (37m 2s): Navy, Navy, you can use your Christmas money on it.

Jesper (37m 7s): Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right. So I would say thanks a lot Adam for coming on to the amwritingfantasy podcast and share your views and thoughts and knowledge about read through to, to help our listeners to, to make their own series more profitable longterm. I thank you. It's been a pleasure. All right, thank you for listening throughout 2019 and have a very good new year's Eve tomorrow and we will see you in 20

Narrator (37m 39s): if you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Adam and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 52 – Holiday Special! How to create a holiday for your fantasy world

We are in the thick of the holiday season, so what better time to talk about adding holidays to your fantasy story?

Jesper and Autumn discuss the steps to make a holiday relevant to your world and story in this slightly more light-hearted episode.

Expect laughter as well as some useful tips to add holidays and lots of holiday-induced tension to your WIP!

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and YeJJsper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper and I'm autumn. This is episode 52 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and since it's the 23rd of December as this episode releases, we decided to do something a little difference. It's sort of a Christmas special where we going to share how to create holidays for your fantasy setting. So I guess we could start out by saying Merry Christmas to everyone. But I have to say that feels a bit weird saying that now that we're recording this in the beginning of December, but I guess technically it is Christmas now, isn't it?

Autumn (1m 5s): It is for everyone who's listening or at least very quick close. And I mean heck it after you'll, um, so after the solstice and Kwanza and Hanukkah and all of those holidays. So we're just in the thick of it now. At least when you're listening to this for us it's like unstressful early December as we're recording. So that's kind of funny. Yeah. I'm not quite into the Christmas mood yet. I don't know about you. Well you have to remember I just had a two foot snow storm today so I that's pretty Christmas.

Yeah, I'd start beginning to at least look a lot like Christmas here. All the decorations are going up for everyone cause we're post post the Thanksgiving holiday in the U S and now here in the Northeast. We just got dumped with a huge store of that's lasted over 24 hours and it's still snowing and I think we're still expecting another foot tonight. So my poor dog is like, you see his ears and the tip of his tail of this? No, it's, it's really kind of sad cause he liked the snow was like he wants to avoid it.

He's a November puppy and where he was, where we got him from a, she was a very small breed or a local place in Maine, and, uh, she had something going on in their yard, so she never let the puppies out. So the first time when we brought him home in January is this, like this little ball of fur that was like, you know, he fit into a shoe. He was so small. Uh, the first thing he experienced was Maine snow winter. He loved it. He acted, he has this Arctic Fox thing going on where you actually rears up and pounces like you see foxes and polar bears do.

Yes. That is an instinct since he was a puppy. So he, he often, he'll hear something and there the snow, he's a current terrier, so he's sort of like these Toto and the wizard of Oz, except he's a little bit bigger and he's a redhead. He's gold. And so if you can imagine this little fuzzy mud like dog who, uh, they're bred, they're not toys, they're not, you know, or ornamental dogs. They're actually a working dog. One of the oldest breeds in existence where they're from Scotland older than Scotties and they were bred to get vermin, badgers and foxes out of Karnes, hence the cult carne terriers.

So yes, he has his amazing hunting instinct and you let him out and he hears things under the snow and he does his little Fox pounds and tries to grab it and kill it cause that's what they do. But he, so he, uh, he loves snow. He will go and roll in it, uh, during our travels as we've been traveling and we were trying so hard to find him snow every month of the year. And we did pretty good. I think August we managed to find some, cause we're up in Alaska and there was some stuff in the passes.

Uh, it's, it was kind of a challenge, but we tried to make sure he found snow and got a role in it and play in it and he was thrilled. Hmm. Nice. So how was your week? I mean, you're not getting two feet of snow, right?

Jesper (4m 12s): No, no. Notice there was no snow here. There was a bit of rain today way. It was like a slight, slight, slight snowy is snow flakes coming down today, but it was more like half rain. So it does count. And w well we are down to like two degrees Celsius, so it's uh, it's getting cold and it's getting wintery. So, uh, but speaking of a puppy's am, we spent this past weekend at my brother's and his fiance's place and they actually have a puppy as well.

So, uh, my, my boys, they, all our boys, they really, really liked it. I think it's the, the puppy is am is not used to people staying over. I think this was the first time that somebody stayed over for a weekend, uh, in his lifetime. So, uh, actually the Saturday morning, the puppy was kind of, it was so stressed out that it got sick. So we were growing up Saturday morning and stuff like that from all the attention.

And you know, the puppy doesn't have any filters to, to stop playing. Right. So if somebody wants to play, just keeps playing, but it's still quite small, so it needs to rest. But it can't figure out how to rest. So it just falls over and sleeps. Yeah, well no, they had to carry it upstairs and put it into, into a room up there so we could sleep because as long as it was downstairs with the rest of it, it just wanted to play all the time. So, uh, yeah, so we've got a bit sick, but then, uh, yeah, it slept for half, half well parts of of Saturday and then they felt better again and then the boys got to play some more with the puppy dare.

So they really enjoyed that. It was, it was a nice weekend. We, we enjoy going there and uh, my brother and his fiance that they're such hosts, you know, they go out of their way to make sure that you feel welcome every time you're there. So it's really nice. That sounds wonderful. That definitely sounds like a nice family visit. And hopefully your employees are satisfied with just visiting the puppy and not going to be bothering you for your own little canine companion. Yeah, they were already telling my wife when we were there. So I think maybe you should start considering getting a puppy or actually the oldest one of our dogs are boys actually started out differently.

He was, he was trying to be sneaky, so he was asking my wife's stuff like, uh, don't you think it's cute? Don't you really like, it wouldn't be nice if you could pet it every day. Yeah. Good owes to him. He is pretty good. Yeah. He was trying to get her to say that she really liked it because of course you did, but, uh, we're not going to get a dark, but, uh, he was trying to ease, ease her into a saying that you wanted the dog too, but he didn't succeed.

How are you guys am you know what he's coming from, huh? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, uh, but that's, I mean it was a very nice weekend. Um, but uh, Oh also, even though it's nice and relaxing and, and all that, you know, when you are out from your own house, and especially me, the older I get, if I don't sleep in my own bed at night, I get really tired. I F I have a trouble sleeping if I'm not in my own bed. So this morning, Monday morning here we are recording this Monday evening, but this morning I was very, very tired when I got up.

But uh, but I still managed to get all the final stages of the character creation process done for our next fantasy series. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty psyched about that. Yes, I saw that shelf in my inbox. I was like, darn it. You know, I've got to get to looking at that. I even haven't opened it up yet today, but I will. Oh well maybe tonight after I make dinner and put everything away I'll take a peek and see what you created and I can't wait to give you feedback and start working on this a bit more. Yeah. I also cannot wait to get into the fiction writing again, although I guess we have to say we have quite a lot of bits and pieces to finish up with causes and nonfiction books before we get that far.

But, but it's good to just make some progress in the background on, on the fiction stuff as well. Absolutely. I think sometimes the plotting is at least keeps it going, which is exciting and makes it still feel connected. Oh, we go on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast. Uh, so I posted a pretty interesting article on, on patron about writing in a noisy or a silent environment and, uh, I'm not gonna go into all the details so of that article there, but, uh, those on patron could of course read it, but among other things, um, except set that most people reach peak performance under moderate nice conditions like 70 dash a bills.

Um, and that just happens to be roughly the equivalent to the chatter in a typical coffee shop or restaurant on a relatively busy day. So that was a bit interesting. But Sates come and really made me laugh because he said, well, uh, he cannot write during silence or while listening to music instead, he said the sound of politicians is usually perfect as meaningless back proud chatter.

Autumn (9m 24s): That is really great. Yes. I guess, I don't know, streaming, um, you know, the U S government would really inspire me, but I guess it makes a good background babble.

Jesper (9m 36s): Yeah. Meaningless chatter. That was, what do you call it? I thought it was real great.

Autumn (9m 41s): Okay. And it's funny cause I enjoy the UK parliament compared to the U S they slam each other and shouting and all kinds of stuff. It's intense. It's, it's, I did not understand politics until actually I spent a year in England and it all made sense cause you know, it's the size of the a U S state, but it's a country and suddenly it's like, Oh this is how it all works. The U S is just too big and there don't get riled up or passionate, but Oh yeah, UK.

Awesome. So I think I'd get end up getting caught up in the accents and everything else going on. If I was listening to that as my, my background noise, unfortunately. Yeah, I think I'll pass on that one. But I told him very funny. I thought it's very funny. I was really excited actually in the Facebook group that Arthur had posted a question on wanting to find a font that looked like a computer speaking because you know me and fonts. Yeah. I was just about to say Fonz, that's your thing.

That is, I was like, Oh topographies. So I we there was some good suggestions but Oh, thank you Arthur for posting about fonts. It made my day. So I enjoyed that and I enjoyed the suggestions and that, you know, some people actually linked to a whole bunch of free fonts such, I'm

Jesper (10m 59s): not going to go look at right this second. But it's very tempting. Yeah. But I guess with font you have to be really careful right in, in making sure that they are actually free to use also. Because one thing I think, unless I'm mistaken, you're, you're, you're an expert. He has a, correct me autumn if I'm wrong, but I think sometimes you can actually find funds that are free, but they're not free for commercial use. Right. So I think you need to be careful here, right? That, that even though you find it for you, you need to check that is a commercial free font before you start using it for a book.

Autumn (11m 32s): Sometimes it's free for personal use or free for, you know, commercial use. You definitely, most of them come with a license and you just need to read that really quickly and make sure it is actually free to use like on a book cover and go with go with that. Or if it's free to use on, uh, on your book cover, but not free to use if you were making book covers to other people. Lots of layers and most people will answer them for you. And you know, you can always go to actually my favorite font resources called what the font. So there is a fabulous Sapporo to itch.

It is WTF. So, uh, there's a fabulous forum on what the font am and people are fun experts in the us. It'll answer questions and they'll help you track down fonts, which I won't admit how many times I have done that. Um, they will help you figure out all that stuff. So if anyone has a question am I highly recommend what the thought as a very good resource. And plus it's fun to get to say that to other people. Although I,

Jesper (12m 32s): I really don't know how they would police if you're using, uh, you know, a font that isn't allowed for commercial use. If you, let's say just you accidentally used it on your cover, I will don't know how they would police it. I, I don't, I don't imagine anybody sitting in going through all the covers on, on Amazon just to make sure. But, uh, of course anyway, we need to make sure we always complained with w with licenses and whatnot, but I'm just wondering how they would actually figure it out.

Autumn (13m 0s): I think it would be the random chance of someone finding it and questioning it and then asking to see your license. Um, and cause obviously you could possibly be using it legally because you paid for the license, which is usually what happens. So I can't imagine the challenge. I don't make fonts. Um, I'd love to make a couple of fonts, but I can see the challenge for licensing that I think I just do it for myself or I just let it free for use and yeah, I wouldn't want to go there.

Jesper (13m 29s): No. And I mean, how many times has it happened at anybody approached you to ask if you had the license for any of the funds are you currently using? Right. Never. Never. So, yeah, so I'm just wondering how that would all work. But yeah, who knows. Um, I should also mention that as we recording this episode, we just had the monthly Q and a, uh, we our patron supporters at the $5 here can get their questions answered, but there's a low, small rewards for those who support the amwritingfantasy podcast on patron.

So head on over and check that one out if you please. And uh, there is a link in the show notes. I was about to say, I guess that's right, this time. Last time I called it the description field, but the, yeah, so check that one out. Uh, there was lots of good stuff or one patron. Yeah. So we thought it was very much on point to talk about holidays now that we are just the day before Christmas.

That's right. So holiday is this, I don't know, may maybe, maybe some people find it a bit complicated or they make it a bit complicated. But to be honest, I think that the, the process we use autumn it's, it's simple.

Autumn (14m 52s): I think so too. I mean, obviously I think there's some people who just immediately assume you're going to have all the same holidays that we have in this world, in your fantasy world, if you're not writing on earth or about earth or earthlings, I think you're pretty much free to come up with something new. And that to me is so much more fun. But yes. We we've developed or we've each done it on our own and then we've adopted the process together. That I think makes sense. It makes it easy and it's always, to me, it's fun.

It's so much, it's a fun aspect of world building to be able to create a holiday. Okay.

Jesper (15m 30s): Yeah. And, uh, the, the process that we've, we've developed together here for, for how to do it, it's actually going to form part of the am, uh, oil pulling course. Yeah. That we're going to, I was hesitating there because I was trying to think when I could say that that's going to be done, but I don't want to do that. Maybe sometimes in 2020 goal we've talked about a goal and we would love to have it out this summer, so the summer of 2020. So fingers crossed and kick us in the butt and that's still my goal.

So we'll see if we can

Autumn (16m 4s): that happened. Yeah.

Jesper (16m 6s): Can't wait to get that course out. I truly think it's gonna help a lot of authors, uh, we with the, with the world building. Um, and it's, you're of course going to be a full step-by-step costs, but that it's going to take you through everything you need from, from basically building a fantasy world from scratch. But we are going to talk much more about that once we have something concrete. But for now, at least, we just sort of plucked out one topic from that course and that was, uh, about the holiday. So we could just talk you through how we do it and it is actually rather simple.

Um, and I think where we start is by looking at the history of your world. So just like in the real world, he has autumn said, you know, usually our holidays are linked to something that happened in the past. Um, whether you believe in that happening or not is not, not really the point, but, uh, but if you look at your, the history for your fantasy world and then try to find some past event that people would be celebrating, then, uh, that's, that's the starting point.

And you just have a bit of siren there. Yes. Maybe that was a, maybe that's inspiration for holiday or something. Oh, it could definitely be, it'd

Autumn (17m 23s): be a inspiration for a very dramatic event. I know I've read some really good holidays in short stories, especially science fiction that were actually from huge like not necessarily terrorism events cause I don't wanna think about September 11th but a big event. I think if we had celebrated the Hindenburg exploding in the aftermath of that and you know there's things that Mark, you know, big dramatic and tragic events. Then of course there's ones that Mark maybe the birth of a mythical character or of course I like astronomy.

So if you happen to have several moons and they come into conjunction with the sun and suddenly you have this amazing eclipse or you know like the changing of the times, like with the solstice that just happened on the 21st I definitely, I've always liked, I've always preferred the solstice and the Equinox is as big holidays because I am very scientific in, they're very visual and that works for me. I know when something happened and that we're at that point of the year where we just went through the longest day or the longest night, the shortest day, the darkest part of the year, and now every day is going to get lighter and brighter.

That's so exciting for me. I can celebrate that when wholeheartedly, uh, no religion necessary. So that's one of the fun things I think that we're trying to say here about holidays is they don't have to be religious. Obviously if you do have gods are gods and you want to have some mythical events around their life and death or birth or something like that, you can have that sort of holiday but it can just be the birth of a great hero. It can. And it can also be like a past military

Jesper (19m 3s): when you know, maybe it's celebrating the end of a war or at some point of famous battle happened and that's what people are celebrating. Or it could also be like purely scientific, like discovery items, you know? Or maybe maybe they found a new land on a at that date and that's what they're celebrating. Or somebody figured out how to muse use magic on that date. That's also pretty important, I guess, or discovery of an ancient race or artifact or something like that.

I think that you can make basically pick anything. But I think that the important thing when you're picking something is that it's some, it's somehow re relevant maybe as a backstory to the story that you're telling so that it's, it's, it's within the confines of or within the frame of the story or that you're telling that it's relevant in one way or another. I think that's, that's the trick to try to pick something like that rather than something completely out on left field that doesn't really have any difference whatsoever.

Autumn (20m 4s): So what do you mean? Like it fits the content of the story? Just about the people. Like do you mean it's because the character is an event, like the festivity and something happens or that the event itself, like the historic battle that actually ended in cause this event, um, is also related to something hidden in some kind of subplot that's bubbling up under the surface. And that people are actually discontent or this is actually taking place in the suppressed nation that lost and they want to, they're kind of celebrating with their teeth, gritted saying he, yay, we lost.

Yeah. I mean it doesn't have to, it can of course be showed at the, the, the event is

Jesper (20m 48s): actually something in the story is going to take place at that. And when they can of course be that. But what I actually meant by it was more like that it shows off parts of the world that is relevant for the story. So maybe as an example, um, so in our upcoming fantasy series, we have, the majors have actually trapped a, a doc God in like a prison cell. Uh, and the problem is that the cell needs to be charged because otherwise if it's a losing, it's am.

If it's losing his power, then the dark God can escape. So the batteries run out. Yeah, exactly. Batteries running out basically. Molly's, yeah. So, so what we then have is that we have once a year they need to recharge these batteries. Uh, and there is like an event around doing that. So it's, it's like a holiday event where there's some soldiers are doing different activities in order to reach out to those batteries. So, so it's not really directly related to what the protectionists is experienced in the story, but it adds to explaining that, okay, there was a doc got imprisoned here and the need to chat the cells and it apparently is dangerous if the dark art gets out and all that.

So it, it's sort of, it's, it's a nice way to build in frame or of world building elements without you having to go into actually, you know, explaining what this is about. And by the way, within that tower, there's a dock, God and blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, so by having an SSL vibration, you can make it pop off. What is it? It's part of action almost that you actually explaining parts of the background or, or for example also with the famous battles if that's what you want to do, you know, it could be in order to set up and explain to the reader that activities two nations where maybe the protectionists belongs to one of them.

These two nation hate easier each other and potentially there was some wire it's going to break out or something because there was worse in the past. You know, so it could be something like that where where you're sort of layering in world building that supports the story but it doesn't have to be because it's directly related to the plot, but more it's, it's more like background information that you get an excuse to deliver background information. In other words, it's like a fantastic way of showing the reader something about the world instead of telling the reader about some backstory and pass.

It's a fantastic way of, yeah, avoiding the info dump, which we've talked about in a different podcast. And instead dynamic right into showing an action in, you know, the reader or the is actually living through the event, which is much more exciting than hearing about some piece of archaic history. Exactly. Right. Yet. So I think, so once you've decided on an event, uh, then you need to ask yourself how important this holiday is. So, uh, we've, we've sort of specked it out on three different levels.

So either you can say that it's a, it's a major event that if basically affects everyone in society. And if that's the case, you need to ask yourself, how long does this, uh, holiday last? Is it like days or weeks of celebration? Or what is am? And also does it require any special form of preparation? Or you could say that it's a minor event that owned, that affects a considerable number of people in this society, but it does not require much preparation. And it isn't like a notable investment for people to, to basically celebrate.

Or thirdly, the holiday could merely be something trivial that maybe only last a few hours and most people don't even bother to participate. So, so that's sort of the next step to define how important is this, uh, to, to society.

Autumn (24m 40s): I'm currently going for the Viking Yule log that has to burn for 12 days. So you cut down an entire tree. That is why the holiday I'm going for right now, but I didn't know what to celebrate that 12 days off of work because it is my holiday. Yeah, go arguing a good excuse. I could take my laptop and sneak it in the corner. It will be good. But, and I agree. I mean the other options. Yeah, you're right. So you can have something that maybe you just need to cook a special meal and go to the temple and leave it in front of your ancestors or you know, is it something where you basically need to sit down for five minutes and say a prayer?

You mumble through it really quickly, know when you're done, Hey, let's get back to work.

Jesper (25m 19s): Yeah. And basically the level of significance of the holiday is important because it allows you to determine, of course, both how widespread and common the holiday is, but also how time consuming it is. Because if it is an important holiday that that requires a lot of am preparation. Well, well now it's the 23rd of December, right? So you probably just been through all of it is it can be quite stressful to prepare for holidays and uh, you can, uh, you can put your character through the same, right?

It's a good story trigger to maybe have some conflict between characters who was, and while they, they're arguing about some preparation work for the holiday or what to wear or what it may be. Right. So it, it's, it can be a good trigger for a bit of conflict.

Autumn (26m 4s): Yeah. For some reason I'm visualizing the conflict between the one character who hasn't started their preparation yet and I'm the one who is going, what are you going to get it done by now? That might be because I'm the slacker in my family. So hopefully by the 23rd and we're recording this, I'll be ready for the upcoming holidays. Yeah, you'll never know. Dear reader, dear listener, uh, please check in and ask how I did.

Jesper (26m 36s): Yeah. So, uh, so once you get that far, um, then you decide on one element that will

Autumn (26m 44s): make this holiday stand out. So this could of course be like the type of clothing people wear. Maybe, well we just talked about like a special contest that, that that's sort of what we did with, with our upcoming fantasy world here. Um, or it could be, I don't know, ritual sayings, prayers. Maybe they eat something. Special that's what I was about to say. Cause you know, I'm a foodie, so yes, especially initially you had to prepare or you know, is there a procession that's always an interesting one that could be even play into not just a one day, but a multiple day.

You have to go on a Trek to reach this temple and it takes three days and you have to do this as you pass this thing and this as you passed, you don't want to get too cumbersome and detailed, but you know, the more chance if this is really a huge aspect and an important part of your story, there's a lot of issues here that you can pull out and make some tension and drama. Especially if someone bumps over the, you know, one temple they're supposed to be, you know, worshiping at. That'd be me too. Yeah. I think that the key here is, and maybe this is the trip wire basically, because the key is to try to find something that isn't boring, right?

I mean, yeah, I eman I mentioned clothing people wear, but if, if that's what you do, you know, may get something very unique and awesome clothing. There's not like, yeah, then they put on a blue apron over. It needs to be something. What you're going for is something that both, um, fits within the context of the culture that the character belongs to. But also at the same time, something that is remarkable and baby may, we'll just make the reader go, wow, this is awesome.

Right. So you need to try harder bit here to, to come up with something that is special in one way or another. I mean a ritual saying a prayer. Yeah. That you could do that as well. But then try to figure out how can I make it something like where the, where the reader will say, okay, that's not a type of prayer I've seen before. You know, um, because otherwise it's just boring. Yeah. We'll sing around the Christmas tree. It's just boring. Yeah. You need something new, something more, much more exciting. And I mean, if you need inspiration, you Google some archaic, uh, you know, some different celebrations from around the world.

Mayan Inca, go look at some of the native Americans and Polynesian islands and see what some of the costumes or the foods or what's going on there. Because it's really inspiring to see how other native cultures have celebrated over the years. Because it's really a lot of fun. And it may give you some ideas because this, if you're going to spend the time to show this to readers, you really want to bring out something that kind of is stands out that makes you go, Oh, this is important. Even if it's just, I mean, if it's a tiny little, you know, five minute ceremony and you just mentioned it in passing, again, it should have an importance in the story, but make sure that there's something else going on there as well.

Jesper (29m 46s): Hmm. Yeah. So once you get to that stage, all those left to do is to give the holiday a really cool name. And uh, of course, if you create a name that for well, for example, it could be maybe a name of a person or place that the reader hasn't yet her off, that that could be a good way to add a bit of mystery to it and make the reader wonder what that might be about. But I think it's good to have a name that it's that some in some one way or another, I guess raises a question in the reader's mind that, that that's, that's a good name

Autumn (30m 21s): that makes sense. Or at least makes them think that this is such an interesting, you know, holiday I've always liked a, the candle. Most the holiday in Celtic is envelope and I hear that one. I'm like, why is that exactly? It's like, wow, I don't know what it is, but I want to go celebrate it. Or of course, one of my favorite actual holidays, and that's coming up tomorrow as you're listening to this is you'll book a flood, which is the Icelandic tradition of reading a story on Christmas Eve. So yeah, you can easily find some amazing holidays, but it's the ones that are fun to say and kind of go, what is that?

That that's kinda cool. You don't want to just make it something difficult to pronounce.

Jesper (31m 2s): No. Yeah, that was exactly what I was about to say. I mean, it's not fine with cool names and because the same thing applies for when you're naming characters. Absolutely fine with cool names, but it has to be something that you need. Try to read it out loud yourself. And if you're stumbling over the words, then there's no good. It has to sort of flow quite quite well.

Autumn (31m 22s): Yes. There's nothing wrong with naming something like the black candle miss or something. If it works in fits, whatever you're trying to evoke, that's fine. English isn't acceptable language and writing.

Jesper (31m 36s): Yeah, but, but, but, but the thing is just to sometimes worse looks cool written, but then they are very difficult to pronounce or you might, the reader might be endowed on how you're supposed to pronounce it and, and there's nothing worse than the Rita actually stopping reading to start wondering how am I going to pronounce this word right. I mean then they've just, you just pulled them out of the story so that you don't want that to happen.

Autumn (32m 1s): No, no. It should all flow pretty smoothly and you don't want them wondering, you want them maybe wondering a little bit of a peak history, you know, they wouldn't be curious about what's going on, not curious about how do you pronounce this and why the heck are you delving into this holiday and showing it to me at better half an important aspect to the story. So those are the key points.

Jesper (32m 24s): Yeah, I agree. And then then of course, would holidays also think a bit wider in the sense that holiday is, are often shared across borders. So for example, if you have, you know, maybe two nations, uh, who are at war with each other than maybe the holidays one time a year where they actually have a momentary peace between them for that week that the holiday takes place or something. But, but just be mindful, at least that neighboring countries and even maybe even further widespread within your world, they holiday is to cross borders.

So, um, so that's, that's important to think about, at least. Of course. That's what I've always loved. The stories of the Christmas Eve piece,

Autumn (33m 11s): treaties that were made between front lines in the world war one and world war II. I think that's always a spectacular example of something that crosses boundaries and actually pauses a war. But of course you can also have opposing holidays where if someone thinks another country that there's already a lot of friction, maybe they don't quite celebrate it on the same day or the same way. And so if you're trying to build some tension, you can actually create tension through the use of holidays in your story as well. So that you know, two people from opposing cultures are either arguing about the day or that no, you can't use that spice or no, that's not how you prepare that.

So you can always have some fun am if you need to add some arguments in there as well because goodness knows if anyone was celebrating Thanksgiving and you know his family traditions don't necessarily work all that well. When you're blending your family together,

Jesper (34m 4s): it's always troubled,

Autumn (34m 5s): right? In my world there always seems to be trouble. I don't know why that is. I should start focusing on peaceful times, but, uh, there's no one's gonna read that. Right?

Jesper (34m 16s): Yeah. But, but I, I guess, I mean that's more or less so. I, I hope and I guess that you can see that it does not have to be complicated or time consuming to create a holiday for your fantasy setting. I think that the main thing is that you, that you find that hook that makes sense for the story you're telling and, and, and that fits with the world and the culture of the character. Um, and that might take a bit to figure out what is best. But as I said, up at the top, your world's history is a good starting point.

So, uh, looking into that should probably give you inspiration of what to build. But, uh, but it does not have to be complicated and time consuming.

Autumn (34m 59s): No, and I will go back to that. If you don't want to do the history and you have God's and do have religions and obviously with those you will probably be coming up with some sort of holiday and that does give you a lot more leniency. Like I said, it could be a God's birth and other things like that, but don't forget, you can foreshadow, you could have a holiday that they think in some future date, something big is going to happen on this date. So everyone gathers together and kind of insulation of this big event. So there's so many ways that you can bring a richness to your world and your characters of events that are going to happen and kind of tease out the nuances.

Maybe it'll fit

Jesper (35m 38s): with your world and how you're building things. And definitely though should somehow fit with your plot and something, something big is going to happen there. Yeah. So this was a bit of a lighthearted like world building, a episode for you here just before Christmas. So hopefully you got a bit of a inputs for your world building and how to create holidays for your own setting here. Uh, and next Monday I will be interviewing one of the biggest and most successful indie authors in the world.

And that is Adam Croft. I'm so excited about this one. Yes, it's going to be awesome. And, uh, Adam will join the amwritingfantasy podcast and talk about read through and how it can revolt, revolutionize your book sales. So that's a holiday treat waiting for you next Monday.

Narrator (36m 29s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 51 – Top 3 Writing Advice I Wish I Had Received When Starting Out

There are so many things to learn when you're first starting out as an author.

It's not only about the craft of writing, but also marketing, cover design, editing, and so much more.

Where should you start?

In this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper share the top advice they wished someone had told them when they first started out.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self-published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Bert and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper and I am autumn. This is episode 51 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and we are going to share the three best pieces of advice about writing. I wish somebody had told us when we first started, so that's probably going to be quite good. I think it'd be quite good.

Autumn (50s): And I honestly had a hard time just coming up with three. I came up with five in the end, but we'll see. I will see if I could narrow it down. Wow. Five. Okay, cool. That's good. So how has your week been a, it's been good.

Jesper (1m 10s): I've been good. Uh, we were out am bowling, bowling, bowling last this past weekend. Uh, well, technically my, uh, my oldest son had his birthday like two months ago. I suppose you could say that's a bit late too in my doubt. His classmates better late than never, right?

Autumn (1m 30s): I guess. Well, I guess as long as he doesn't mind, got to celebrate it maybe twice. I

Jesper (1m 39s): but it went well. Uh, I'm, I'm not really very good at bowling to be honest. So yeah, I think all the kids played first for like one and a half hour. And then the last hour we adults joined it and I started throwing the two first. Paul's in the gutter. So I had to, I had to claim that the sun blinded me and the wind stirred me and of course all of this was inside and whatnot. So the kits look quite skeptically or be able to just shook their heads, like my lame excuses. But, uh, but it was fun, uh, although too, well, at the end the youngest got quite upset because he lost.

Uh, but yeah, but you know, he, he's the one who always also plays football and he's very, very competitive. So I had to explain to him, because when we first started, you can get these kid barriers on onto the goddess so that the ball doesn't go into the gutter. Right. And then when we started out, I asked him, I asked him if he wanted that to kids, Barry. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, no. He didn't absolutely not want a kid, Barry. And I said, okay, fine. So he played half of the first game or first frame or where, I'm not sure what it's called in bowling, but half of the first game basically he played without the kids.

Uh, barrier on which of course some of the balls ended up in the garden while the other ones were playing. It just hit the, and then they always got a bit of pins knocked over. Right. So, but he didn't get that. So, and then halfway through the first game, then we put on the barrier for him as well. And then the kids he was playing against was that they were three years older than him. And by the end of the game he came in two points after number four, something like 15 points after number one, which is pretty amazing in my shoe.

And I tried to explain to him that, you know, you played extremely well. These kids are much older than you and you more or less all those tight, you know, two pins. That's like, it's luck. It's just luck. Nothing else. You could have gotten fourth place against somebody who's three years older than you. That's amazing. But I would say it took quite a while before he felt just a little covid.

Autumn (3m 52s): He sounds like he's quite the competitor. You're going to have fun with him. Yes. Yes. He's very competitive. That is so sweet though. Yeah, and that's actually, so that teaches me something, I never thought about what countries have bowling or even where it originated, but, Oh, I dunno. I dunno either. But Hey, we have both have bowling in common. That's kind of cool. Yeah, I'm really bad at it. It was, there was a bowling alley really close to my high school and so that was literally one of our gym classes.

And it was never my favorite thing. But Hey, it got us out of school and we've got to walk down the road and um, played a love. Oh did you know at least twice a semester. Uh, it's never something, something that I've gone like you know, after school and hung out at the bowling alley, I'd actually rather play pool. I love pool. Yeah, me too. Always. We're, we're in the bowling alley. When I was younger I always convinced somebody to people with means that money we're going to have so much fun when we finally ended up on the same continent, it's going to be past that.

How, how was she a week autumn Oh it's been going well. You know we've been doing so talking and it's funny cause I am driving a bit more commuting and it was funny. I know you dictate your novels, that's how you do your writing and I've never done that before so I'm suddenly thinking I want to try this out. So I know you and I have been sharing some dictation tips and software and things we use. It almost makes me think that maybe this is like a potential podcast issue. I know other people have tackled it, but you know, give me some time to see if this is gonna work for me.

And I think we might have to am see if it changes how fast I can write or find, get my brain to wrap around. Not seeing the words in front of me. Cause I know recently, uh, some of the last novels I'd write, I would hit a snag and I would jump ahead and write that and then I'd come back and write the filler spaces in between. I'm like, that's not gonna work. It's DyKnow. So I've got to wrap my head around it and give it a try, but I'm kind of excited to give it I. Everyone who's does it says that they can get much more written if they did.

Yeah. It goes a lot faster than, than writing of, obviously you can, you can speak a lot faster than you can ever type. So if your mind is organized, yeah, you have to get your mind organized so that it's like, yeah, you know what you're going to say and where it's going and yeah,

Jesper (6m 14s): and funny enough, funny enough, it ties back to the plotting stuff like that. Cause I would not be able to do the dictation. Well okay. I could I guess, but I wouldn't be very efficient at it if I did not, if we did not do all the flooding upfront. So I knew exactly what's going to happen in the chapter before I even start. Um, and then it's, it's of course you need to dictate all the customers and, and all the new paragraph and open quote, close quote, all that you need to get used to saying all of that, which of course you are, you're not used to that when you're typing.

And so that's one thing. And then I think the other thing at least for me is, is to keep the flow going. So, for example, if you, if you, let's say the character comes to a castle or something and then you can't quite just on the fly to make up what the castle looked like, then I usually just like open brackets and then I say,

Autumn (7m 6s): great, cool description of castle, close brackets, and then they just move on because it's so cheating. No works. Right. Because I keep the flow going and, and the, the main point for me at that stage when you're dictating is just to get the story onto the page. And when you're doing the editing, you can always add in nice descriptor

Jesper (7m 24s): and all that, but you don't have to on the fly, dare try to figure out a cool description because even if you did, likelihood is that it's going to be cliche. It's going to be what comes to the top of your mind, which is not going to be the best description you can come up with. So some, yeah, I do. I do that quite a lot sometimes. So just add in that, yeah, sort of placeholder to add this or add that here.

Autumn (7m 47s): Oh, that's at least a good tip. So yeah, that's a good another tip you hadn't given me before. So I will keep that in mind as I get going that even if I have to just be like skip this area, they'd put this in and then put a note, Oh, put this in the area you skipped. Am that is what editing is for. So, but just be neat to see if I can get this rough draft out because it's in my head. I tend to be a little looser in my plotting when I'm on my own, but I have it outlined pretty well and I know what happens at each of the chapters and I think as long as I keep myself organized and it might be good am I organize my brain a little bit better, so I'm going to give it a whirl and see how it works.

And I'm just starting out with some really cheap actually free stuff. Software I already have. So we'll see how it was and it, that's a good place to start. Yeah, free is always a good place to start. If I like it, I'm going to get into what you have suggested. And like I said, maybe there's a podcast in this some point. Yeah, maybe, I mean, uh, for the listener, maybe, you know, dealers know, if, if, if a dictation is something that you're interested in us talking about on a, on a future episode, then let us know, you know, and uh, that we'll certainly consider it on the internet with the amwritingfantasy.

Podcast so I went in this morning autumn into the Facebook group because I thought I better start approving some people because I just over the last week, it's just been crazy. There's so many new people joining all the time, but there was new, uh, notifications popping up for people and it's awesome. But, so I went in there this morning and look at, already beat me to it. Everybody, he does that to me too. And I like, I'm going to go in there and no, well, I guess I'll go read through some comments and see what looks been doing because he's such an awesome moderator.

So I, I honestly, I don't know how we would cope without his assistance. It's amazing. I mean I, well I, well at least people would be waiting quite a long while to be admitted into the group if it wasn't for him. So again, I know we said it before, but huge thank you to very much appreciate his help keeping. It's nice because it's not so much keeping the group wrangled, it's just letting people in the door because happily the group is pretty good as far as not doing posts that they should. So for the most fun, yeah, there's a lot of activity in there.

It feels like it's really picked up. You know what people are posting a lot, which is very nice to see and they are commenting a lot on other people's questions and it's, it's amazing. I really, really like it. It is getting to a good place. I got lost in Jason's post about how many times a Milky male character can cry in a novel and if the gender should really matter. I know is, I figured you would see that one too. Yeah, that was the one I noticed as well. When I looked at it, I had over 27 comments already in us just looking through them and they're good.

They're really funny and they're insightful and I just like some of them, I don't know which ones were your favorites. Um, but I know there was one that, I mean the core that it's it. It's the reason that the person is crying, the main character is crying and not the gender. And I just love seeing that where it's such a good place in fantasy where you can have your male character cry. Yeah. A I was actually also a thinking about that one and I was thinking maybe we should just add our own short reflection here on, on that question.

Uh, autumn but, but may, may, maybe that was your reflection. You, you agree with that comment or did you have do something else to ponder about? No, I just think I'm definitely I. There was an example in there too about a female character who was trying to cook everyone dinner and her pot wasn't big enough and she just sat down and cried into her brother came and fixed it for her and how just that is not right. That is, that is a stereotype and I thought, you know, it had both arguments of this is a stereotype that you should do and these are examples of reasons you should do it.

But I agree it's, I don't want to see personally if I'm reading something, I don't want to see a weepy, weepy character, be it male or female, but I've had female characters cry. I've had male characters cry. And I do think the core is the reason, you know, if it is impactful enough, if it is painful enough or happy enough to stuff, forget there's happy tears, that crying is fine. And you know, we do it as people and emotionally it should be in your novel too.

Jesper (12m 17s): Yeah. Uh, I think so too. Well, if the question is how many times they care to can cry, I don't really think you can answer that question because it all depends on context and why he's crying as, as autumn have just been talking about. Uh, I would say even though if you have good reasons for the character to be crying, if it's like every second chapter, then it's gonna be really annoying, really fast.

Autumn (12m 44s): Male or female, I would be dropping a book probably. Yeah.

Jesper (12m 48s): I mean the Rita does have to like the character and root for them and nobody roots for somebody who cries all the time, even if there's a good reason for it. We do want to see characters take action. We want them to sort of own up to the problems and do something about it. Not sit there and cry about it. He, uh, I mean, so I would say there was a line somewhere and I cannot define that line for you, so you have to do it yourself. But, but there is a line somewhere whereby you could do it too much, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with a male character crying.

If there's a good reason for it, um, as long as it doesn't happen, happen too often, then at the same thing applies to a female character. There was no real difference between the two in this case.

Autumn (13m 31s): No, absolutely. And I agree. It's, it's, to me it's almost, should be not a crying out of frustration because they can't solve a problem but crying because of a loss of something heartfelt. Um, yeah, just crying because you're frustrated at throwing up your hands in the air and you can't handle it. Don't avoid that one.

Jesper (13m 50s): No. Exactly. Yeah. So questions like this one is what you can ask in the amwritingfantasy Facebook group and you will get all of these different, a competent reflections and responses and all that. So I think it is really a really, really awesome group of fellow fantasy authors. So if you have not yet joined the amwritingfantasy Facebook group, just go to Facebook and the search by amwritingfantasy and the group section, then you will find us.

Oh, so autumn you have five different things to share about the best pieces of advice. Uh, I have three, but I was thinking that maybe we should, uh, try to alternate a bit so that we are moving up through the ranks one by one rather than just giving five and three in a row. And I must admit that I'm very excited to hear yours because actually I I don't think we've really talked about this sort of stuff before, even between us. No, and I remember when

Autumn (14m 52s): we came up with the topic for this one, you kind of got excited like, Oh, that's a good idea. So I think so too. And I feel so organized. You know, I usually, you know, I come in with a little bit of background information but kind of wigglies things where you're the most organized one. But I have a list lower than yours this time. So do you want to start with, um, yeah, no, I think we should work from the bottom and okay. If you do your number five and you're number four, then I'll do three and then year number three and two.

Okay. So I will do my first two since I came up with five cheated. I did, I couldn't help it when I start. This is why I started writing courses. I just have so much advice and so much trial by fire that I want to share with other authors. So I just can't contain myself. So I ended up with five. But one of the things, I think one of the first things I saw when I was a new author, I was on Twitter and meeting other authors is everyone was complaining about marketing and marketing takes them away from writing and marketing blog, marketing hub, you know, hate, hate, hate, hate on marketing.

And I wish someone had just pulled me aside at some point and said, you know, marketing is often just sharing what you love about your book. What is it that gets you excited about your book? That is really the essence of marketing. So you should actually love it as well because you're sharing your most passionate parts of the earth story and your storytelling. It's just finding a way of doing that. And you know, whether it's social media and of course there's always buying advertising, but that's, you know, if you hate taking five minutes to buy advertising, I'm so sorry it's only five minutes, but the other marketing be it blog posts or social posts.

It's, it's really just sharing what you love about your story. So don't hate it. You should love it because it's part of what you love about your story and then number. Yeah. But no, but I think that's, it is a good point. Um, I'm just wondering how, how did you, how did you get to that stage? Because one thing is say is to say don't hate it, just love it because it, yeah, fine, but I still hate it, you know? If you're in that frame of mind, how did you transition into actually wrapping your mind around, actually this is something I do like, I think like pairing it down there was just a certain point where, you know, yes, it's not writing but it is 100% something.

Equally, if you're going to be doing this as a business, you're going to be marketing and you should probably never do any I. If you don't love something, people do know it. You, if you're just spamming it, throwing up close that you don't really care about and not crafting something. I'd rather see two really good posts in a week, then two every single day that are crap. And I think that when people start realizing that, you know what, it makes a difference to really put some time and effort and love into making these posts be they blog posts or you know, I love Instagram so we've already been there.

So hanging on an Instagram and seeing something that someone really did love rather than something they threw up really quickly cause I felt like I had to do something for marketing today and their books have to sell more and they just, you just feel that kind of desperate energy and it was standing back and saying, you know, this is, what do you do? How do you make this difference? And I think that's where I adjusted plus I. I wrote a booklet on am 50 blog posts, so topics to get your writing about your story and writing that I realized how many of the ideas I came up with where because I wanted to share something I loved about my story and it started when you start realizing that you love writing and you love these characters and you love everything you do and you know you get a writer talking, you can't get them to shut up.

You should love marketing. It's all about sharing what you love and try to do it in concise soundbites that you don't overwhelm the person you're trying to tell.

Jesper (18m 47s): But it also sounds like you're saying that it's a matter of not, could we call it like being too ambitious about it? You know, like, like you said that now that I have, I have to do some a new blog posts every day. No, but rather try to scale down the ambitions and then say, okay, let me do whatever I can feel that I have to time for I that I can cope, you know, rata one really, really good blog post once a week rather than a shitty one.

Autumn (19m 15s): Yes, I think so too. It definitely comes down to once you realized it, so it should be something you love and you shouldn't be driving yourself crazy trying to get all of them done, you know, make time to do one or two good ones a week rather than something every single day. It's, yeah, that's part of it. Definitely. All right. And so the other one, number four by other add on was uh, just a reminder to tell people to always, right, because you love it. I think as you take on your writing journey, you learned so much.

You learn about how to write, how to run a writing business, you know, tips on how to make sure you're writing a story that people, you know, readers are going to buy that you, so you end up writing stuff that maybe you think it's going to sell. And sometimes you lose the perspective that you actually enjoy writing. And she'd be writing characters you enjoy in a story you enjoy. It's so easy to kind of get lost and start just writing stuff that to do it, to make money. Um, and so it does a business and you have to look at that.

But if you're not loving it, you know, step back and think about it. If you're no longer enjoying it, because most of us come to this because we have a story you want to tell him. We love writing and I've seen writers as they progress and tr even, I've done it a little bit, you start doing it more as a business and you might lose a little bit of that soul. So don't forget to still love what you're writing.

Jesper (20m 40s): Especially nowadays, there is a, a lot of chalk in the author community about releasing more books and read them fast. And I, I, I don't remember actually to be honest, if we've talked about this in more detail in a past episode, maybe we have, but I, I feel that it's, it's, it's like a road to hell that we only, because people are going to get burned out because of it. That they're trying to keep up a pace that is absolutely crazy and you lose your passion and you've got to get stressed out.

And at some point, maybe you can keep up the pace for two years and you're going to release 15 novels in two years or something, but then you're going to burn out. And then what was the point? There was no passion in it either. I mean, I don't know. I would rather say I release, let's say, let's say we release two or three books a year and those books are passion projects. It's because we like it. Um, and it's at a pace where we can sustain it longterm. But of course as autumn set, I think as well that there is a point to be made about that it is a business.

So if what you love to write is something that nobody likes to read, then yeah, I mean, right. Those books once in a while, but you have to then sprinkle in some books that is more like what the market wants to read, right? So you could write like, let's say you write two books for the market and then you write one book for you. You could do it like that, but, but I don't know. I know it's a bit of a tangent here, but, but I just think that it's important to you.

You cannot just write passion if nobody wants to read your passion. Yeah. Unless you want to just doing it for a hobby, then of course it's fine. But, and I think that's the key is that, yeah, if you're going to do it as a business, you have to pay attention to trends and some of the, you know, we've both done research on the top selling books and what are the commonalities? And so you know that data, but hopefully you can weave that into a story you really want to tell. Because if you're just writing something that you know, five years ago, you would've totally cringed if you had read it.

Oh, you think about that? What a little bit before you write it maybe or give it a try but don't tie yourself to it. Yeah. All right, well what's your number three? Yeah, that was a tangent. Okay, so my number three is, I wish somebody had told me when I was done with the first book and I had to create a cover for it and I had to write a book description that creating a cover on writing a book description is just not something you'd just go Willy nilly about.

You know, I mean the book description we talked about last week, so I'll have to labor that point much here, but, but maybe with the cover because, and this is probably something that I'm not in a low alone in Oh, I was not alone in this boat of thinking that when I'm, I need a cover for my book now that it's done and I need something that just looks awesome. Yeah. So I'll get some somebody and then I'll say, I'll tell the, you know, somebody who knows covid the science because I did do that luckily enough to do it on my own, which you should never ever, ever, ever, ever do.

But, uh, I did get somebody who knew what they were doing to do it, but, but I, I dictated to them what sort of cover I wanted and I went for something that I want to look really pretty. And of course the coven D does need to look good. So that's not what I'm trying to say. But the job of the cover is to convey the sugar to the reader. And my cover does not conveyed a younger to the reader. So it's, it's a big mistake. And if, if I just, you know, researched it a bit or try to understand that well covered assign, I guess there must be some sort of logic or idea behind why covers looked at the way they look at me and I could have avoided that.

Um, that mistake I made and I had to, I have to regret Lee admit that I still haven't gone back and corrected it because I've been way, way too busy with all kinds of stuff and I know that's a lame excuse and I know I'm not doing what I preached the people shouldn't be doing. I should go back and correct it, but then I have to update it a million different places and I have so much to do. I still haven't gotten to that point on my to do list and I don't know why as since I made the book book Permafree it, it gets downloaded quite a lot anyway, so it I don't know.

I don't have a burning platform that it hurts me enough that I, I want to spend time on it above something else, but I really wish I had known that when I started out to be on,

Autumn (25m 31s): no, I think that's a good point. A lot of new authors, you know, I see some that come in so market savvy. I just want to be like, where did you learn this? Because even I didn't know that at first, but you know, I started back in 2012 where you could literally just scribble something on a as a cover and toss it up and people would go and buy it and download it because there was just, there were so many less books now on the competition. Whew. It's cutthroat in a good cover and a great description. But like you said, we just covered that the last episode, so that's fine.

But yeah, it's definitely very, very true. And yeah, you, you know, you don't want to get me going on covers and cover design. That's the other hat I wear. And there's a whole psychology and subconscious reading that goes into even the fonts. Um, yeah. And the colors and the mood. And I just had a discussion with someone. I'm doing a cover for, uh, angel wings. Do we want them lifted, which is more positive versus down, which is more dark and yeah, don't get me going on the symbolism that's hidden in covers that you read in just seconds.

Your mind picks it up, makes a judgment based on your, your entire novel in just, just a few seconds. So those covers, there's a reason they're complicated. Yeah, there is a reason why,

Jesper (26m 55s): eh, an Epic fantasy cover looks usually the way it looks. I mean if you for for the listener here, if you go to Amazon for example, there's a top 100 in Epic fantasy for example, and have a look at those covers in the top 100 and you will start to see some patterns there. And it's for a reason and dose out of sort of things that you want to emulate in your own cover now that copying any of it, but you want to pick out what are the common threats throughout these covers in my sub category on Amazon.

And then you want to use those things in your own cover rather than coming up with this amazing, beautiful picture that you think is look so good then nobody has ever seen it before. No, but that's true. But there's a reason why nobody ever saw it before. It's because it's not going to sell it.

Autumn (27m 43s): They're not going to do a genre it is or anything about your story, they'll be like, huh, yeah, exactly. So yeah, that was my number three. I like that. Number three. So my number three, now that I'm up to three, uh, is again sort of on marketing, but it's, I wish someone had pulled me aside and to, when you're trying to figure out how to market and how to sell books, especially as a newbie, I wish someone had just said, don't worry about all this other stuff. Focus on creating a strong interaction with your fans, which you know, mailing lists, good reads is also a fantastic way of like meeting fans and talking to them instead of, you know, do that over posting on social media or Facebook groups or just post that you send out to the world and you hope someone will find.

It's really, it's the comments, it's the interactions, it's your mailing list, building up relationships. They're getting your super fans that I think will end up benefiting you in the long run. So much more than having a great social media platform. So I wish someone had really talked about that. Cause I know there was a point where I had been working on I think book three and I hadn't really started book Fauria and I wasn't even sure I did actually a whole series of between three and four because they're technically two separate chill at is even though the same character, same world, but totally different story arcs.

So I took a break and I didn't even email my mailing lists for a well. I let it kind of languish and I saw a big hit in sales and especially between books four and five. It took me a while. I'd mentioned that the last episode, but five had the most complicated plot that I changed my entire plotting technique when to Scribner. And so it took longer than even my usual to get it out. And I let a lot of things drop and I really saw that hit between book four and five.

The sales weren't quite as there and I really blame that on me taking time as well as me not telling my readers lots going on and not being really communicative.

Jesper (29m 42s): So don't lose your fans, don't lose your super fans. Stay in touch with them somehow. Yeah. Communicating is is important. Um, and I guess especially, I mean, if a PR linking back, a looping back to what we just talked about, if you're one of those people who are putting out a new book every month, which by the way, some people do, um, then it's probably less important because you're going to communicate with them anyway. I sending them a new release every month, but, uh, but if you're like the rest of us human beings are not vampires and uh, or AI secretly.

Yeah. Then, uh, yeah, then I think it's a good point autumn to make sure that you communicate with your readers and keep the interaction going in, in the, in the low times, in between books. Absolutely. What's your number two? Well, I know this one is probably a bit cliche and say one way or another, but still my number two thing that I wish somebody had told me and, uh, it's also something that you and I have said over and over and over again on this podcast.

Autumn so I dunno if you can guess what it is. We've also talked about it on past YouTube videos and the in one of the, some of the older ones. Oh shoot. There's so much we've covered now. Yeah, I know. Just telling me I can hit you a bit that it's, you actually just said that a bit in what you said in your number three just before, uh, so that as long as you do with the series, uh, the email list, the email list. All right. Yeah, I mean, thank God I did create a mean email list as soon as I started out. So I did not make that mistake and I'm really glad about that because I had picked up that much that I needed to have, uh, have a, an email list.

So I did create that from the get go, which, which is good. So I was off to a good start there, but I just did not put very much effort into actually building the list. Uh, I mean I did a little, uh, but the majority of all my focus went to advertising for selling books and not really building the list. So when I, whenever I had some money to spend to reinvest into my business, I usually spent them on a sales ads rather than list-building ads. And, uh, I, I think I, I really wish somebody had told me back then that, uh, you should always prefer a new email subscriber over sale because the email subscriber that gives you a possibility to, to, you know, build a relationship with that person and then make them invested in what you're doing.

And that's a million times more valuable than a $5 sale. And I just did not have that focus back then. And uh, yeah, I really, really regret that. I think am I always appreciated the business model that basically a returning customer, it's so much more important and where are you going to make most of your money rather that one than

Autumn (32m 40s): a onetime sale. And so that's sort of what we're saying is if you have a mailing list and someone you can contact and is excited about what you're writing and is ready to buy the next book where you know, invested in the next series. That means so much more than, you know, the one, you know, doing a sale or a download and sending money to some of the advertisers for that. So I agree. That is actually a really good number two. Yeah. Yeah. We did talk a lot more about email list building back in episode six of this podcast.

So if, uh, if what I just said triggered you in any way than the, I recommend going back and listening to today's episode if you missed it. Yeah. And my number to actually kind of relates to a recent podcast episode as well. Okay. I don't know if you can guess which one, but actually I mentioned that when we were talking earlier. So my number two is that I wish when someone was talking about, you know, the show don't tell and all of those things, if they had just mentioned that, um, just just focus on one emotion or one description, poor paragraph or sentence.

I see a lot of new authors who are told, you know, show emotions, don't tell them and they throw in like facial expressions. Um, so they're like squinting or flailing, you know, they often have ends in there. Like the character brunches, their brows and frowns and you know, all these little suggestions. It's like, okay, you just just focus on one, bring out one emotion. I remember reading one where I was just like, I don't know what's going on here. There are so many emotions listed, so many actions.

And I could not fathom at the, I was at the point where I'm like, I just want the author to tell me what the character is supposed to be feeling cause I don't get it. So I think, yeah, I think when I was really learning and it was so easy to get overwhelmed with how to show emotions and even descriptions, you start layering in this and this and this and becomes an info dump before you realize it and you don't want to do that. So that interview you just had with CS last Lakin is um, fantastic if you yeah.

If you have questions on like how to really convey emotions, uh, well go back and listen to that cause it really helps look at emotional the art, the sources for writers because that is something I think is really being strong with that, especially as a new author is going to do you worlds of wonder. And like I said, I remember just reading someone else's work and just being so confused because they were talking about all these physical symptoms of emotions and I didn't have a clue what this character was supposed to be feeling or thinking or just what right over my head.

So yeah, I don't know. I don't recall the exact episode number, but it's probably something like 49 maybe or something like that around that in any way. So go back and find that episode if you want. But I think

Jesper (35m 39s): the gist of what you're saying in your, in your learning, number two, their guests, it's just writing is hard. It's difficult. And when you're starting out it's incredibly difficult because you don't know if you're doing it well or not. No, it's very true. And I think, I think most authors go through a phase where they learn a lot and it becomes a lot harder that eventually they just kind of have to put some of that aside and just right again and then use it on their rough draft. Because you can also learn so much that you prevent yourself from writing cause you know you should be doing it better.

So don't do that either. No. True. And work with an editor who knows what they're doing on. Feel free to post some writing in the amwritingfantasy Facebook group and ask other people for some comments and what not. But also be careful not to listen too much to what other people are saying when you, especially when you're first starting because it's so easy to get derailed about, Oh, this person told me to do like this and that, but then that person over there told me to do this and do what I really had a lot of benefit from when I first started out.

What I found like a, a what? It's not a writing partner because he did not do any writing, but he was like a sound board for me. So he's like for you really? Yeah, kind of it, you know, he was very experienced with writing. So what I would do is I would send him one chapter at a time and then he would come and on it and I would go back and I would rewrite the chapter and I think I wrote that chapter one like 15 times or something before he said, okay, you're ready to write chapter two now and so forth.

And I went like that for at least six months and made almost no progress. Um, but I, at least for me, I think it worked very well that I had one person I had to listen to because if I had to listen to 15 different writers giving me advice about this and that, I would be immensely confused because when you're first starting out, you don't know what's right or wrong. You don't know if a, if an advice is good or bad. And sometimes I think we've set this before as well. Writing is also an art form, so there is no right or wrong, it's not like math that you can say two plus two is four and if you get five then it's not right.

It's not like that. So there's also some, there's a lot of gray area in this and just because some Arthur tells you that you should be doing it like this, well that might be, he saw Hearst preference and that might be in his or her voice, but it might not align to how you actually doing your storytelling. So yeah. Yeah, it's difficult and you just have to write a lot to be honest. And then find, find a few people you trust and listen to Dan advice, uh, and, and just write and write and write and write and write.

Agreed. We've got to the top of the list. We're at the top of the list. So what is your number one? I know we're on my lumber one, huh? It's my turn. I think so.

Autumn (38m 37s): So my number one piece of advice I wish someone had told me when I first started out was right a series and release it close together. What I read my debut novel, born of water. I just wanted to write the story and I think I kind of had a dangling out there that it was going to be a serious, but I mean, I didn't even have a serious name. I didn't have a name for book two. I didn't really have the character arcs. I mean, it's amazing how much differently I plot now. Now I have not only the book names, I have the overall arcs.

I know what's in each book. I kind of have it all mapped out and I did not do that when I had book one and one. It's it's if you're going to do that, it helps. So that way you can tie your books together. It's a much more interesting series and when you write a series itself cells, I remember what I finally released the last book in the trilogy book. Three sales went through the roof because it was complete at that point and yeah, I wish someone had told me that. I think it's so much more exciting to go ahead and get everything written, get it released to get the whole series out.

People are much more excited. Your much more excited and I just, it didn't, yeah, it didn't realize it when I wrote book one and I had to do a lot of like scratching my head and change my cover cause I didn't have the series title in there anywhere because I just had it up out as a standalone more or less than it. It really isn't a standalone. So if you're going to write a series, if you're going to write a book, you really consider writing a series. It's better for sales, it'll get you excited. And if you're going to do it, just have all that stuff figured out from the get go.

It'll, it'll save you so much headache later.

Jesper (40m 15s): Yeah, we have am we have mentioned this last week as well, but, uh, between Christmas and new years, we have, uh, one of the biggest indie authors in the world coming onto the podcast called Adam Croft. And he's actually going to talk about just what autumn said and why it is so important to, uh, to write in series and what difference it makes. So you're gonna hear a lot more about that in the past. We also had Lindsay Perro onto the pet co asked you also talked about it. So yeah, there is a lot of advice out there and just take the word for it. Uh, you need to write it.

Autumn (40m 45s): Very good. Okay, so that was my top one. What is yours? Oh yeah. So my, it's funny because I think this one actually goes

Jesper (40m 54s): exactly the opposite of one of your past. Yeah. Because when I first started out, I, I, somebody had told me to spend more time writing and less time marketing because that's true. Yeah. My problem is that I I love the marketing part. I think opposite most of the authors, like you said in one of your past one you said that nobody wants to do with the marketing, but I'm one of those, I want to do them.

So it would make me inclined to spend a lot of time learning about the marketing platforms, how to do, make the ads as optimal as possible, split testing and all that stuff, uh, increasing conversion rates and so forth and so forth. So I ended up spending quite a lot of time doing that. Uh, also when I just had one book out, which is pointless, you know, let's wait till you have the series. Yeah, I, yeah, I would say probably when you have like three to five books out, then you can start playing around with advertising.

But until that point, it's really not that much worth of your time. You can do the list building apps and do that. As I said in my, in my number to a lesson, um, I wish I had spent more time list building so you can do that for sure as soon as you have, even before you have one book out. But, but sales ads, it's like it's a waste of time. And if I just focused more time on writing instead of doing ads all the time, I think I could probably have a lot of more books out by now.

Autumn (42m 22s): Yeah. Yeah. I think you are a little unusual as an author that way, but there are other authors who are good with the spreadsheets who are doing this, you know, from the beginning. Um, the sales, if it's not a business, in their minds, at least the sales are a validation. And so it's easy to focus on doing that when you know you're, you're still new and you people are going to discover you and right now it's really hard to get discovered. And so yeah, you could be spending a lot of time and money on something when it might help to get the whole book yet. I think for you know at least the two series one series done, but you know a little bit more under your belt because, Oh my goodness.

I will say one last piece of things to be aware of. I remember once talking to a Twitter, a very author had been doing it for 20 plus years. I can't remember how many books she had. Out and she said she was so happy that her debut novel was under a different pen name because now she doesn't have to even pretend she knows what any, you know what that book is about. And I won't say I feel that way quite that way about my debut novel, but when I see what book one versus my 16th book that I just really use looks like.

Yeah, my writing has changed a lot. So to keep just keep writing and do you remember you will improve and at some point you'll look back going, I was so hung up on advertising book one and marketing book one and just having written one book and now look at everything I have and how much I've changed. And now I want to hide book one a little bit,

Jesper (43m 50s): but that's okay. Yeah. So the next episode is coming out right before Christmas. And uh, we decided we wanted to do something a little different for you. Yeah. So we're gonna we want it to give it a bit of a Christmas feeling to it. So we are going to talk about how you are going to create a holiday for your fantasy worlds. So it's world building time and I'm already looking forward to it.

Yay.

Narrator (44m 23s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 50 – How to Create a GOOD Book Description

Did you know that after your book cover, your book's description is the most important tool for selling your book?

It's true!

And in this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, we break down not only how important a good book description is, but how to create one for your book!

For more info and tips on how to write a book description, check out Jesper's book at https://www.jesperschmidt.com/books/how-to-write-a-fantasy-book-description/

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self-published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I'm Jesper and I'm autumn. This is episode 50 of the M writing fantasy podcast and we are going to discuss the book description and some also call it the blurb. It's basically what you write on the back of your book and S a sales description on sites like Amazon. So we're going to discuss what makes for a good book description how'd you write one con, which can convert to sales and that's all coming up on this episode. Excellent. I can't wait because this is so important to your book sales and interesting readers, but yeah, we'll get there.

Autumn (1m 7s): But first we have some news. So you had quite the week. I understand. Yes. For.

Jesper (1m 14s): Yeah. I don't think that our listeners want to hear any of the details because I've just been sick with the stomach flu for several days and then it was not a pleasant experience. And and the details I will spare you

Autumn (1m 27s): does not sound like fun. I mean, that definitely puts a dent in everything. I mean, it's like a full stop when you're truly, truly sick and in bed, so I'm glad you're feeling better. Yeah,

Jesper (1m 39s): much better now. Yeah, I was, I was in bed for three days with, with 40 degrees fever, so you can, you can imagine now that I'm feeling better and I got back to my work and whatnot. There's just a ton of things that I'm behind on now, but that's the name of the game.

Autumn (1m 53s): It is a it. Yeah. It's always seems like I know you and I know us and we always have our to do list that we'll never see the bottom of because we're always adding new things and so you not working on something for a few days and must have looked like a mountain grew.

Jesper (2m 8s): Yes, exactly. Yeah, I've been, I would say today, uh, uh, my time, we're recording this in the evening, so, so all day today I've been really busy trying to catch up on stuff, but I think I have some stuff I need to catch up on tomorrow as well. But for the most part I'm quite pleased with the progress I made today. So I got a lot done today, so that's good.

Autumn (2m 32s): That's very good. Now for me, I mean I was told you I was maybe struggling with a little bit of a cold. I had a small fever, nothing like you had, but I think my computer is like cursed right now. Honestly, I've never had one of those weeks where like you try to go do something simple and whatever you try to do either needs updated just isn't working right. You gotta reboot, you've got to reload. It just seems like everything I've tried to touch on my computer this week has been fighting me, so I'm, I'm about ready to toss it out the window even though of course I can't cause I kind of need it.

Oh, it has been. Maybe a computer has the stomach flu as well. I think I might be at least, I know it's not a virus, but it might have the stomach flu and even my Wacom tablet. So you know, they do a lot of graphic design. You know, I go and work on something a couple of days ago I go to go back to it and first Photoshop didn't work. Uh, the new update complete. I can't open a file that was nearly finished, this really big full paperback rep and Photoshop open it. So two hours later, my entire time to work on it, I finally managed, just said to heck with it and reverted to the former addition of Photoshop and it would open.

And then, so at least I got it as far as opening. But then I go to work on a new cover today and my Wacom tablet, my, that I use for drawling isn't working. Every time I go to touch it with the pen, it goes to the upper left corner of my screen and I'm like, I could touch it. But every time I use the pen it zooms off. Some lie. So after some research that I finally decided it was probably the drivers and updated those. So I am ready to work again, but I'll get back to that later tonight.

I see,

Jesper (4m 25s): Oh my God, this is what like one thing, you know that I cannot stand. It's like all also, you know, if my, if my computer is not working or something like that, it's like I feel like what should, what should I say? Like, like the carpenter who was trying to do some carpentry and then his tools are not working as well. It's just like, it just has to work. I don't want to fix tools. They just have to work. They're there to serve me and I hated when they don't work.

Autumn (4m 53s): Absolutely. And it seems like, like, you know, especially for something creative, you're in the mind or like thinking about it that you want to sit down to write and like, you know, you either don't have paper or your Scrivener isn't working or something silly like that. And it's just like, it kills the energy that you have going that you want to give to whatever you're working on. And so yeah, that's I think part of the frustration too. You're just who wants to spend two hours trying to figure out a Photoshop update when they could be drawing and making happy pictures.

So that was my week. Writing fantasy

Jesper (5m 34s): so this is a sort of a bit of old news by now I guess I'm not old, but it's like a month old I would say. Uh, but I, I post a some, some details about it last week on, on Patrion, uh, because we have now got the ability to place Amazon ads in the Amazon UK and the Amazon German stores. That's right. So that's pretty cool. I mean, technically you could do it before, but you needed an Amazon advantage account, which was pretty damn difficult to get.

I tried like three times applying for it myself and I never got one because you're not supposed to it w it was sort of like a work around of the system if you like. So I never got in there, but now they have officially opened soda. You can actually place Amazon ads in DC, in the Yukon German stall by at the KDP dashboard itself. So I started testing out that and playing around with it somewhat. So that's pretty good actually. Um, I've started to see uptakes sales in the UK where it was very difficult to sell something before because if you can't advertise, we all know how you, how you drown in the, in the sea of books.

So, uh, Oh easily. Yeah. So it has helped a lot. Um, but I will say for those who's going to test this stuff out, uh, be careful of the currency differences please because, uh, if you are betting like let's say 50 cents in the U S that don't put 50 cent into the UK store because then it's 50, you know, it takes pounds. Join no, not 50 pounds, but yeah, but it's, it's all, all of a sudden a pound's currency. Right? So zero dot five is a lot more than zero dot five in the U S store.

Yes. So at the same thing for the Germans sort of start as Euro. So that's a 50 cent Euro and not 50 cents USD. So be careful. Otherwise you will pay a lot of money to Amazon all of a sudden.

Autumn (7m 28s): That's a very good tip. I'll have to remember that. I haven't tried that out, but I do need to beef up my advertising. Again, I'm trying to revamp, thinking outside the box on marketing because like you said, so many people are doing the exact same thing. And I just, I'm always hitting that wall going, what is next? What is new? What is no one else doing? And well, when I figured it out and get it working, I'll certainly let you know for now, I later, everybody will be doing it too. Maybe I won't let anyone know. Maybe I'll just let you know or maybe just start listening.

I don't know. We'll figure that one out. But I am bound and determined. If we find something new and innovative because there's gotta be something else, it can work because, Oh my gosh, Amazon is so saturated.

Jesper (8m 13s): Yeah. But to be honest, I think finding something new, it is difficult. Um, I think it might be more about just being better at the ass and everybody else so that you just learn how to do it. Even better. I mean, Amazon ads, it might not be the best example because that's like uploading keywords and doing some bidding. So, but at least if you're doing something like Facebook apps, there is a lot of different, very insisted you can, you sort of apply to ads in terms of how you're targeting and how you're placing the ads and all that stuff.

So I think there you can learn how to do it really well and, and then make, basically make a difference in. And we have some, uh, wealthy, this is way too early, talk about that, but I can never help herself. But we have some stuff that we already have prepared and developed for three costs that we're going to do in 2020, but I can almost say with certainty that is not going to be ready until after someone next year. But in there, we actually gonna, um, give you the possibility to, uh, to get your hands on an ad tracker that we use or I use so far, but it's for also used for our books.

Um, and it's gonna it will, well, I already wrote it, so I know it's, it's, it's explaining all the best practices and how to do it, how to target, how to, where to place your ads, how to think about your ad copy and, and everything is India. So we're going to give you that your PO, the possibility for, for you to get a hand of that in the last half of 20, 20. Uh, and of course if anything changes, I will of course updated as well.

Um, but yeah, and then once we get that to you, then everybody will start doing that. Then I'll need to figure out.

Autumn (10m 6s): But that's all they new. But that's all right. It is really such a cool sheet. So I mean, I was excited when I saw that and I need to get into using it and get my, like I said, my marketing tamed, but it's really excellent. Yeah. Um, so basically, yeah, that was some stuff I posted about on, on Patrion, uh, last week. And, um, I think if, if you want the listener to get some exclusive posts like that one that I mentioned here together with writing tips that autumn post regularly as well.

We also have early access to the podcast episodes, dedicated Q and a sessions and much, much more than a checkout amwritingfantasy on patron.

Jesper (10m 48s): There was a link in the show notes down below. So I just have to say that there was a lot of work that goes into producing these podcasts episodes every week. So if you do find them valuable, you know, as little as a dollar a month, we'll really make sure too that we keep the lights on here. So, so consider that please.

Autumn (11m 7s): Yeah. And we appreciate it. And especially though not just the patronage and getting some, you know, that dollar a month. But I know like Jay Zaid had once again mentioned that he, uh, he really liked the one reason podcasts where I mentioned that even though I hear in my forties, I just discovered this awesome purple beauty Berry that I didn't know exist, that there's actually a plant that has purple berries and I love purple. So it really connected home with him that, you know, even the most experienced character in his story is not going to know everything about the world or everything that's going on.

And I thought that was really cool cause one I helped another writer and two, it's, it's so true. It's another perspective just because you have a knowledgeable character that they're not going to know everything and it's so much fun to get to talk writing and help each other out and you know, get new perspectives. And we do that all on Patreon so it's kind of fun. I hope you join us there.

Jesper (12m 10s): Oh, so book description actually one of my quiet, it's a topic I quite liked, but I used to hate, I guess I could put like that. That's true.

Autumn (12m 20s): It's one you have to grow to love. And I see so many authors, you know, complaining about writing them and I have to admit that I used to complain to like, how do you boil 105 hundred and 20,000 words down to, you know, ideally you something around 500 but I know for me, I really conquered these when I wrote the 11 short stories that would into the beginning of the prequel to my dystopian a series and I decided to reach release all 11 individually and I think I was really getting excited about this and so excited I had the covers and then I realized, Oh my goodness.

And it means I need 11 blurbs. I love it that the rest of the series to right. What was I doing? And so that's when I just changed my tune and got much more scientific and much more organized about how to write this and you, yeah, I know you like this. You have a whole book on book descriptions.

Jesper (13m 21s): Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. We're going to put that in description field. Austria. Sorry, that was my old YouTube eh habit coming up there in the show notes. I mean we can't put that on the show notes. Two years of YouTube thing. I guess we can forgive you. Yeah. Uh, but, but I don't know. Maybe it's because writing a book description it's a bit, maybe people think a bit about it. S S writing ad copy almost. You know, so we used to putting together this wonderfully beautiful constructed word words in, in a full fantasy novel and all of a sudden we have to do ad copy in 200 words.

It's like, well we don't want to do that. You know, may, maybe that's part of part of why people don't like it. I'm not, I'm not sure. I mean if I think back originally was not because I did not like it do to the ad copy aspect of it. I think it's more like I just didn't understand how to do it in a way that it would not read like at either a very boring ad copy or it would be like almost like a summary of what the book is about.

And that's not the point either. So, and I, I think I just didn't know how to do it.

Autumn (14m 33s): That's very true. And it's so often you can see the ones who, you know, didn't put in the time, we weren't really sure what they're doing. And even, I know for you and I both, we've updated ours and kept changing and evolving it as, you know, as we learn and sometimes the comments that people leave and we will get into that as we talk about how do book descriptions, they can change what you focus on because sometimes readers will find things in your book that you didn't know you put there and it's what they love and it's the best hook to put into your blurb.

Jesper (15m 3s): Hmm. Yeah. I think when it comes to book description should know, we just cannot ignore this, that there is a business aspect of being an author and a no, we've said it before, but it bears repeating, you know, you have to sell books and whether we like it or not though the, the, the book description it's just a crucial factor when a reader decides to buy your book or if they just decide to ignore it. Tha that's really where the book description needs to do its job.

Autumn (15m 33s): I agree. I mean usually it's really a stage thing. So the often see your book cover and it makes them curious enough that they're going to go read your description and if the description does not make them the blur, make them curious enough to go get a sample. If not outright buy it, then that's where you're going to lose them. So this is the second most serious part of, you know, trying to sell your book.

Jesper (15m 58s): Yeah, I mean because the cover will not sell the book alone. The cover will get people to click on it and say, okay, that looks interesting. And then I should just say it in the book. Description is the one that needs to close the deal. It's sort of like, like the catchy teaser or something like, like for a movie trailer or something like that. You know, it's, it's the movie trailer that gets us into the theater and buy the ticket. Right. But, but the movie poster is the one that makes us go and check out that movie trailer. Right. So it's sort of the same journey that we were going through here when, when we're selling books.

So I think that's, it's just, it's really important.

Autumn (16m 37s): Definitely. And so I know we both have am cause I, I happened to have edited and formatted, uh, your book description book so I'm very intimately familiar with it. But I've also, I think before we started working together, I had written a very small pamphlet, a little worksheet on how to do them. And we have very similar processes, which go figure that's how we teamed up in the first place. Yeah. So I know we both have a theory like how many paragraphs in which ones, you know, what each one is supposed to do.

And that really helps you focus on what needs to happen in your book. Description so for the opening, what is the first thing that readers see potential readers see? What do you like to have on top?

Jesper (17m 23s): Yeah, I mean at the top. So I have five steps to write a great blurb and am that at the top. You, you basically you, well maybe I should just say the five steps first. So you have what I call the tech line. The second one is character introduction, the third one is inciting incident and fourth is escalate tension. And number five if is dire straights and call to action. So we can go through, through them in a bit more detail here, but, but at the top is the tech line.

And um, I think probably one of the most, I don't know if I can call it famous, but one of the best examples of a killer tech line. It was one that, um, Adam Croft group. So Adam Croft is a seven figure othen, probably one of the biggest indie authors in the world. And and by the way, we are going to have him here on the amwritingfantasy podcast between Christmas and new year's, like a special treat. So that's going to be awesome.

Yeah, that's a little present to everyone. Yes. A bit of a Christmas present. Um, but with his book, uh, her last her last tomorrow, he wrote the tech line that went like this, could you murder your wife to save your daughter? You know, that's the kind of thing that entice readers to buy a book. That's like what, okay, I need to read what that is about. Right. That's, it's an incredibly effective way to catch people's attention. And um, and I, I, because I think the other part that you need to be mindful this about that not everybody will, will, you know, browse for you book on the laptop or something.

And so not or not, depending on what device you're using to actually browse the books you pop description might not really show up except for the tech line. So it's important that what is on top there is really, really eye-catching. Oh yeah. So that it doesn't get the clip and then people are allowed to just like, okay, I've got a half a sentence of something that doesn't make any sense to me.

Autumn (19m 25s): No. And I love your example had it was a co, it's a full sentence. It's a question, but a lot of them are often just phrases and those work too. Like some of the ones I've found that I just, when you read them, you could almost start thinking, Oh my gosh, I could write a book about this. Uh, Royal assassin, a fallen princess friends, enemies bound by prophecy. There's so much into these. Another one that I've always really liked is heirloom of forbidden magic. A corrupt sourcer who seeks to rule. You're starting to see some key components, but they kind of give you the tingles.

A really good tagline makes you go, it kind of perks you up and you're like, Ooh, what's that? And you kind of read the next line. And so that's what I think is so cool there. They're fantastic. Once you figured out your tagline, you're going to post this everywhere. It's going to be your tweets, it's going to be your Instagram, it's going to be what you put actually for now, if you go to my website, all of my books, I used to have the book description like next to the picture of the book and then he, then the bio links and stuff like that.

People don't like to see that many words. Now I literally have pared that down to just the tagline. No description so I have the tagline, the picture of my books, and then the links to go get it. That's, that's how important it is. It should sell the book basically on its own. That's what, like I said, you'd been marketing images this, you're kind of put the tagline. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, I guess just to cement the point to how, how important it is, because I know that, uh, Mark Dawson, who was another seven figure in the author, he actually surveyed more than 10,000 readers and he asked them what triggered each person to read his book?

Jesper (21m 8s): Was it, he's covered, he's reviewed his book title and so forth and so forth. And what you learned out of that survey was that almost five times as many readers picked up, he spoke because of the book description as opposed to getting enticed by the cover. So you see that just, it just thrives home. The point that it is incredibly important, the book description is, and I, and I really don't, honestly, I don't think that most people understand that. You know, most, most authors thinks it's something like, yeah, I'll just, I'll put something together there and then slam up there.

Ghosts. I think that's how most authors approach it and it's a huge mistake. I agree. And it definitely takes some practice to get the right one and it, even when you think you have the right one, you don't. That's what your mailing lists other authors.

Autumn (21m 53s): Cool. Ask them, I mean post in our amwritingfantasy Facebook group, that is a fantastic way to get an idea of how your blurb is working and some, you know, feedback on what you might need to tweak. Yeah, yeah. I usually say right, 15 different variations of the tech line and it'd be, it has to be short, catchy and memorable.

Jesper (22m 14s): And then just as the autumn is saying, than my usual advice is that once you have nailed it down to your own three favorites, then start posting those and ask other people's opinions, ask them to vote for their favorites and then maybe the winner will not be the one that you expect. But uh, but if you get enough people voting on it and giving your opinion on it, then yeah, you should probably follow what people are saying. But I guess the one caveat to that is that make sure you are asking people who actually read fantasy yes, that's true.

Don't ask your mother and your uncle and whatnot what they think is best because unless they read fantasy already, then their opinion matters. Nothing. Exactly. And make sure you ask the people who are actually going to not only read fantasy but give you an opinion.

Autumn (23m 1s): Not like everything you do is wonderful at year. Oh yeah. That part as well. So, okay, so let's move on to step number two. After the tagline. You said it's what you have, the character introduction is how you put it. Yeah. So this is where we need to introduce the character.

Jesper (23m 21s): And uh, this is actually where the, where the book description begins because technically the tech line is just a teaser. So now here in step two, this is where the actual book description Texas beginning, and it's usually a short paragraph and it should appeal to general, like human emotions and desires. So it should be exciting and not like, you know, Frodo is a habit of 33 years old and he lives in a place called the Shire blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, we don't want to read that. So it should be something exciting, but, but we do need to introduce the character as the first thing because the character is what the readers need to identify with.

And that's why they should care about reading this book. Exactly. And I think it's one of the things I like to put in.

Autumn (24m 6s): So you're S E this is where you're trying to figure out, you know, you go with your main character, this is who you're going to feature and highlight and do something that's going to hook the reader, catch their emotions so that they kind of want to know what's going on without giving too much away. But you know, for me, when I was doing this the first time, I have am for main characters in my first novel and my debut because I'm just sadistic and I wrote this, I, I, we, I think I counted once.

How many, uh, how many characters I have by the end of book six. And I'm not nearly as good as game of Thrones, but I ha yeah, if you don't read fantasy and you try to get through mine and you don't like multiple characters are going to be like, what the heck is going on? So choosing the one main character is really hard. But I definitely learned as I grew and developed as an author that you need to pick one at the most two. And this is not the time to feature how clever you are at naming places, people, things, creatures.

Literally you don't want to throw too many new weird things that people don't understand unless they've read six of your books. So pick your main character, choose the name and everything else should be her best friend. Her enemy. Stick to keeping just one name because the more weird words you throw out there sticking points and the reader's going to be like, they don't know, they don't care. There's no, they're not going to be overwhelmed by how cool you can name things are going to be like, Oh my gosh, that's a whole book going to be like looking up a thesaurus to try to figure out what's going on.

So that's my biggest advice when you're doing the character thing is just, you know, awesome place names. I'm glad you can come up with them, but when you get to the description cut them out, you just want to focus on one thing and you want what the reader to focus on. Not the names, but that emotional pool of something really important.

Jesper (26m 5s): Yeah, I think that's serious that you just mentioned. I think that was the one where where you emailed, when would you got to bake book six and you said, what the hell am I doing? Why? Why did I include this many characters? Now I have to complete all these acts and we were really frustrated with yourself. It wasn't, that's actually why I switched to Scrivener. I was writing book number five out of the six and I realized the plots or so complicated the subplots you have that many characters do.

Autumn (26m 31s): How many subplots I was juggling. I said to heck with it and I went from pages to Scribner like that and my book plotting has never been better. Yeah, I, I don't think it's on on writing, but it was somewhere where I read one time that Stephen King also had a problem that he, all of a sudden you had way too many characters in the book and he had no idea what to do.

Jesper (26m 53s): So, so he just blew the whole thing up and killed most of them. And then that was salt. Yes. This is a total tangent, but I read a great, a great men today that said, yes, I have too many characters. I'm thinking of killing up, killing off a few of them that should really spice up my autobiography. Yeah. So okay, there's writers writing humorous.

Autumn (27m 15s): So I have a few examples of ways of, you know, things I think are pretty interesting. So on a planet far from earth, descendants of a maroon space, Tyler's fight a decades long war skies, shy scholar Victoria knows nothing of this conflict and felt pirates kidnapped her to sell her to the sadistic tyrant behind it. And so you know, those are getting on you. You were trying to find a way of giving some, a little bit of a setting, a little bit of an emotion, some kind of nuance of who the character is without throwing out, you know, they could have send it out the name with a plan that they could've sent out.

So many other things that name of the places woman was living, but you just want to have the only real name is your main character. And then trying to find some ways of, you know, you know, emotions she's been kidnapped. Do you kind of draw in the reader to keep going to the next part emptied and the next part is inciting incident. Um, so that's probably sounds familiar to most of you I would think.

Jesper (28m 22s): But, uh, so the, the inciting incident from a blip, blip perspective. So that should be a big revelation. Eh, I don't know. It could be like Frodo receiving the ring or somebody who's on the run or perhaps something happens that no one expected, you know, the, the trick is just to ensure that it relates to the character somehow. So it's not like in a far off land a BIC, a atomic bomb exploded. I don't know why that would happen in a fantasy novel, but just came to, but it has to, I mean, unless it's because, uh, like, uh, radiation will come to the character in 24 hours or what do I know?

You know, unless it's something that affects the character, then it doesn't qualify as an inciting incident. From a blog perspective. It has to be effecting the character. And again, you're probably looking at something like only a paragraph long or something like that. Nothing more. Yes. And I like to say about this. So I mean this is one where you can actually use your inciting incident from the novel.

Autumn (29m 24s): So if you've, if you use the plotting, if you use even just the seven stages in your crafting the blurb, you and I, we've talked about this, I tend to actually sort of develop a theme in almost a rough blurb before I start writing cause I kind of know what I'm writing. It's a good way of building out the whole novel outline. So this one, it helps to use your inside the incident. I know a lot of authors who they feel like they're writing this blurb and what they're trying to put in here is actually the climax. And that's too far along your, that's way too much information.

You just, your goal as you're writing your description is to get the reader to get through that first couple of chapters of your novels just until that's where they're going to sell that they're going to be so hooked on the character. And what's happening that they don't care. There'll be like, there'll be surprised by what's coming in the climax as well. So this really is when you're writing your description, you're kind of only focusing on that first third if he'd been that much of your novel. So really this might be the inciting incident that you know, the reader is going to get to in the first chapter, two, three chapters.

So they're going to get to this incident pretty quickly. But that's very satisfying for them because they kind of like go, Oh, this is what this, you know, this is why there, they read the description and they go by the novel. So they wanted to have that solution. But by the time they get to that resolution of what they read, the description for they're already so invested in the book. They read another a hundred thousand words, not a problem. Yeah. That's should be the aim. And then the next book in the next book. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, because the next one is escalate tension.

Jesper (31m 2s): So I think that that builds on what you just said as well because it's more about finding like that next beat that directly affects the protectionist after the inciting incident. So you're basically, I don't think it would be correct to say that you are building like a short like mini mini story in the, in the blurb because that's not quite what you're doing but, but it builds upon itself. So you have a tag line, which when people read it, it should prompt them to say, okay, that's interesting. Let me read a bit more than, than if they read the next paragraph would, was to coach introduction and say, okay, that sounds interesting.

I read a bit more. And then the inciting incident stopped to pull them in and then you get to escalate tension, which then just builds on what came before. So it's more like you, you keep them reading and you're sucking them into basically drive them down the funnel until they get to the next step. Step number five, um, where you are trying to make the sales basically. So that's, that's the underlying idea. And I know that sounds simple, but it's absolutely not, is not and for this one.

Autumn (32m 9s): This is the part that it's actually useful to ask questions and you want to show clear stakes. You know, this is where you can say will they survive, will you know or will they be defeated? These are the ones where you're asking those questions. And so if you are following like the seven steps of story structure, this is sort of those initial openings of the reaction phase where the character is reeling, they're questioning, you know, they want to go back to to what would their life life was like before or they don't. But you're of asking those questions.

That character is basically dealing with right after the inciting incident in the story. So this is where you want to look for those sorts of emotions to pull out. And these are, like I said, this is a great question, great place to actually ask questions. Don't answer them. Let them sit there so that the reader is like, well, will they survive? They want to. You want to capture that little like, Oh my gosh, what's going on? How will they, how will they get out of this little event that you've, you've already drank the reader on to this tiny little 500 word story that you're writing?

Yeah, I think for me, I, I need to be a am I view at least we need to be a bit careful here because escalate tension, that step, you need to be really careful that you're not jumping into step number five, which is dire straits because basically in step number five, you have the low point.

Jesper (33m 37s): And this is where, this is the part where you can stop asking, you know, the question is how, not necessarily that you write this question but at least get the reader to ask the question in their own mind. You know, how are they going to survive this stuff? And if you already put that too much in the escalate tension step, then your blurb is gonna run out of steam into last crucial part. So you need to be really careful on how to balance it. Um, so basically you could almost view escalate tension like the bridge between the inciting incident and then the low point, maybe towards the end of the novel.

So it's like what, what sits in between there that you can sort of build the tension with. So think of it like you are pushing the person reading the blurb from the inciting incident and towards like the disaster point of the novel that, that, that is going to prompt them to say, okay, nobody can survive this. And if you can get them to say that, then they will pick up the book. Because then I wanted to understand how in the world is this going to work?

Autumn (34m 39s): Absolutely. Until, yeah, that's a great lead into the final paragraph. Yeah. So, so obviously you're not trying to, with dire straits, you are not trying to reveal the ending of your novel in any way or give away any twist or surprises that stuff. The point, right. So as we already said, it's, it's a teaser.

Jesper (34m 60s): It's like the movie trailer. Uh, and if you think back on the movie trailers you hate the most, it's the ones that where you can sort of see what's going to happen that that's really bad. So you don't want to do that or where they take all the good scenes of the entire movie and put it in the movie trailer and like you can just watch that and skip the movie. So yeah, so the, yeah, exactly. So the idea is just to leave the reader wondering how in the world is to here, we're gonna make this, just leave them there. And then once you have left them down that fictional cliff there, you let them hang there and then you give them the cultural action.

And basically culture action could be something as simple as the LA last line, just reading buy the book today or something like that. And it sounds stupid because you would think that, well, if they are sitting there, they've clicked the cover, they are on the book page, maybe on Amazon and they're reading through the entire book, aren't they're there because they want to buy the book? Yes. And most of them will probably be, but studies have shown though that a direct cultural action, like by the book today, it does increase the conversion rate.

So there's no reason not to leverage that fact and just write that those few words at the end of it and, and, and just, you know, convert a few more sales. Join I mean, why not, right, exactly. I've always thought that was funny. It's was like, well wait, you there on Amazon reading the blurb and you have to tell them to go buy it. But it makes a big difference to get them emotionally hooked so that they go and press that, you know, by now or download a sample.

Autumn (36m 27s): Now it really does help. And I also say there's am sometimes I like to include something called the emotional cell, which comes right after dire straights. And that's where if you happen to have some really good reviews or awards or just something else that kind of builds up like what fans are calling the new great Epic fantasy, you know, pick it up today. It doesn't hurt to have, if you have something else to put in there that's kind of an emotional sell to get them to really get excited, kind of validate you as an author or your book from other people's perspectives.

They're saying, Oh yes, this is a very good book. So if you've got a a review quote or something else or an award, something you could put in there, it can really helps to ferment, Hey, this is a great book, and then tell them go get it and they will run off and go buy it.

Jesper (37m 15s): Yeah, it's, it's that social proof and, and I will also say if you, let's, let's say that you release the book like five years ago and in the meantime it have accumulated maybe, I dunno, whatever hundreds of years. Let's just say that. Then don't feel too shy to to go back and update your review and just add that stuff into the, to the cultural action section here. Last autumn is saying, you know, just say like hundreds of 5.4 4.5 star reviews on Amazon or whatever.

You know, just at that one line at the end there just to increase the conversion rates because at the end of the day, every single sale caps absolutely selling books. It's not like, uh, it's, it's not uploading and then the sales were just tick U U unique to convert everybody.

Autumn (38m 3s): You can get to land on that landing page. Absolutely. And I will say too that there is sometimes you'll see blurbs on Amazon that go past the call to action and keep going. And I know some people really wonder about those and that's partially because Amazon and other places give you over a thousand words to put into your review. And I think, I forget who it is, I'm almost thinking of this 5,000 words. That's a lot of words and you don't have to fill it, you don't have to use it all. But there are people who know the algorithms and they know the times that they can put in their keywords fantasy blah, blah, blah.

They're going to rank higher. So there is sometimes a, you know, you can have a question and answer session or an interview. I've seen those things after the call to action and I, I'm kind of ambivalent about that. I don't know how you feel about it. Jesper, I know why they're doing it. They're usually doing it to hit all the key words they need to rank higher on Amazon, but it can kind of dilute everything that came above it.

Jesper (39m 7s): Yeah. In my view, you need to be really careful. You're not diluting the blurb. The blurb needs to read well and it needs to be a good blurb and stand on its own. Uh, and the Amazon algorithms are getting so smart that they actually index and read the blurb anyway. So I think you were stuffing is one of the, well, it's the old days advice. It's still good to have keywords of course, but, but then if you write a really good blurb that talks about what the book is about and it's an Epic fantasy or whatever, you know, and you're going to have the keywords there anyway.

So just stuffing more and it's not going to help. Actually. I maybe from an algorithm perspective you might get a few more keywords in, but from a really friendly perspective you're going to lose. Right. So I don't know. I won't say that it cannot be done, but you really need to be careful with what you're doing if that's what you're trying to do. And I think it's just more safe not to try to be clever like that.

Autumn (40m 8s): Yeah, I agree. I think that's a good way of looking at it. How you said it. It's something that used to be done. Keyword stuffing. I think we've moved beyond that. And I think if readers don't realize what it is, I just think that yeah, it's diluting it. So it's probably not current best practice, but you still see it done. But, and maybe you've done it so you might need to go back and Hey, update your burp blurbs. It doesn't hurt to double check. You know, your blurbs after even a couple of years as your book ages and see, you know, make sure that it still sounds as good.

And like I said, sometimes if you read your readers' comments, you'll find some new new things to add. And that's always a good thing. So you might be able to update your blurb and make it more exciting. And maybe you pick up a few more readers. Yeah, that's the cool thing about being an indie author. It's so easy to do these updates. Uh, it, you know, you can always go in, you can upload a new blurb on, on your book and it, it takes like 10 minutes, you know, it's so incredibly easy. And in all the days that was, would have been impossible, but nowadays is so incredibly easy.

Jesper (41m 11s): So, you know, if your blurb is not working, if it's not converting Ville and all this stuff, you know, try to write a new one and to do something differently within. And of course, if, if you need help, uh, then, uh, as we set up on the top, uh, I actually wrote an entire step by step guide on how to write not only just a blurb, but actually a fantasy book description. So it's specifically focusing on fantasy book descriptions and uh, allow the link in the, in the show notes for that. And uh, it comes with a lot of examples.

It tells you exactly what to do step-by-step. It also has a, a bonus chapter on a nonfiction blurbs. So for those of you who might be looking at writing nonfiction like autumn and I do a then am, there is a bonus chapter on, on what to focus on for nonfiction perhaps as well. So next Monday we are going to share the three pieces of advice that we wish we had received when we first started out.

Yay.

Narrator (42m 14s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 49 – The Social Media Networks We Love the Most

Which social media platforms should you be using as a writer?

Are some better than others?

How many social media platforms should an author be on?

In this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper share the social media networks they love the most and insights as to why.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self-published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper and I'm autumn. This is episode 49 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and we are going to discuss which social media networks or writers that we love the most. And this is pretty important because we all live in a digital world and especially as self published authors, social media place.

Autumn (54s): Well I guess for better or for worse, but it does play a role in expanding your reach. It does. I mean come on, you know, you and I actually have a confession to make. We've never gotten one person, so the digital core L it is incredibly powerful. Here we are partnering and teaming up across an entire ocean from each other and we're building a business and we're hope helping other writers that some of them will.

Jesper (1m 20s): Hopefully we do get to meet in person, but then we have to really on the line. Yeah, exactly. Um, and I, I mean, exposure something every author struggles with. I mean, okay, maybe unless you're like J K Rowling and George Lucas or some crazy stuff like that. But otherwise social media is pretty important. It is. By the way, mentioning George Lucas, did you see over the past month how he had been complaining about the direction district took with the star Wars movies?

No, I've actually stayed out of that because remember I was moving, so I really tried. You're not paying attention, so, no, it's been going on. Nobody's, I don't, I don't know how I really feel about this because I think I might be a bit off on the number here, but I think George Lucas was paid something like $4 billion or something for the rights to star Wars, like an insane amount of money. And I just, I dunno, I just feel like a bit, do you even have a right to complain and all the rights for that much money?

Autumn (2m 25s): I mean, shouldn't you just be off on your private Island and keep quiet? I mean, honestly, probably, but if you still feel in charge of the create, I mean, it's his baby shit. No, I agree with you. If you're going to be, yeah, if you're going to take something and you got to let it go and just let it go. Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent there, but, so how have you been autumn Oh, it's been good. I've been, like I said, so today makes it a week since am I moved into this new apartment in Brattleboro, Vermont, and it's been Yuto settling.

So it's been really fun to be stationary and not be moving every day. It's been a huge change. I won't say that. There's not times I miss it because I haven't lived in town. Um, when I lived in England, I lived in Manchester U K for nine months, once, and then I lived in Virginia and I lived in Blacksburg, Virginia, like right in town. My apartment. Um, it had a huge field out back and on the other side was literally the main street, um, with all the bars and everything else.

So it was like really right in the middle of everything. It's fantastic place. And so this is sort of, I don't even really have a big yard here, so I watch, you know, the one of the main roads is one of the quarters of the building. So I can see the main traffic going downtown. And it's hard because I miss the woods. I miss seeing water. I miss seeing the sunset over the lakes and in the woods. That's just, it is definitely where my heart is. But you have some water nearby that you can, I do, yes. I, that's one of the neat things I've discovered.

There's am Brattleboro is really kinda cool. There is within five minutes I can be walking in a forest and there's about 20 miles of trails including this huge ski jump that I cannot wait to see people going down this in winter. I've, you know, I do know how skiing, I'm not the world's best. I still snow plow a ton. Um, I'm not the best of paralleling, but I do ski and then to see this ski jump that's like, I mean I like roller coasters, but whole this day's going to be, I can't imagine going off this thing.

So, but behind it there's all these trails so I can be walking in the woods with the dog in five minutes or I can go the other way and I can be walking into town where there's cafes, I'm walking distance, the library and I'm so excited. I've already stuck my head in there trying to find out if there was any fiction writers groups and they're sort of is a creative writing workshop, but they're on break right now till maybe in the new year. And there is another one called right action and they're a little bit older and not that active, but talking to the director star, which I thought her name was so much fun.

Star and autumn were having a Tecton Tet and she thinks we should start one because there's a little bit of interest and there's other folks. So Hey, if anyone out there listening is in the Vermont Prato borough area, get in touch with Brooks library because I think you might be able to meet me in person. We might be doing a writer's group here. So it's exciting. This is am. I was talking to you before the show. There's something called your first hundred days. It's an old, it was actually a president of the U S came up with this idea I think.

And when I first started with my old job and was a new manager, I was given this by my supervisor at this idea that your first hundred days everything's in flux. You know, nothing has become a habit. Everything's still new and this is the time to reach out and network and find new things. And you know, those new habits started before everything becomes, you know, routine. So that's what I've been trying to do. I've gone to a meditation class, I found a pottery studio.

All this stuff is within walking distance. Are the co-op, which is this awesome food co-op is also within walking distance. I could probably drive faster to a grocery store, but there's something so cool about saying, Oh, I'm out a capers and being able to walk downtown and just go pick them up and walk back. Last night we did a beer run, um, because I just wanted to go get something and there's three breweries in town, so it's really kind of exciting. And I like your written settling in. I think so.

And it's only been seven days. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. So how's your week been besides you? I didn't have to go and move like I did.

Jesper (6m 46s): No, well, uh, yeah, I have my birthday over the weekend. That's right. So, uh, I hear it was a little quiet. Yeah. Well, yeah, no we didn't. No, we didn't do anything crazy at all actually. I went out, I went out refereeing a match and then, uh, when I came home I did a bit of chores and whatnot, but then, um, I, uh, uh, my wife cooked a nice dinner for us. We had a nice evening time. Uh, so, so that was, that was nice.

Um, but I also got stuff thrown at me on my birthday. That was a, yeah, because, because I was out, uh, I was up refereeing and I got both a captain's armband thrown at me and afterwards a soccer boot boot thrown at you. How did that, then there was this, uh, so the, the captain on the home team, he was a bit like a, he had a lot of temper. Um, so early on in the match she got a yellow card for being a bit aggressive.

Um, and then, right, right. Like one minute before the end of the match, F fourth was actually made against him. So, Oh, I awarded him a free kick, but then I, and I don't know what, I don't know if if somebody said something to him or if he was just angry because he was tackled so hard that he got the free kick or something, but he got up and he pushed the opponent really hard in the chest. Um, and they started shouting at each other and there was a lot of like stuff going on there.

So I ran over there and then because he shoved the other guy, I gave him a yellow card for that. Right. It means that when you get your second, it becomes red and which means that you're off. And then he, he just, I dunno, he went completely ballistic. So he's teammates has to hold him off because you wanted to go and attack me. But then he used his teammates, hell, hold, held him off. So instead he just pulled off his arm band and then he's spooked and threw them at me for this. Like, wow, it's

Autumn (8m 52s): not a good sign if he want it to attack you. I think he did need time out.

Jesper (8m 57s): Yeah. Maybe he went completely ballistic. Uh, but, and the, and the stupid thing was that he was the one who got the free kick. No, this is like, okay. Yeah. There's no explaining. I wouldn't put that one into a book because I think the cause and effect would be hard to figure out. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a real shame, but sometimes it's just like adults behaving like children, you know? And it's, uh, yeah. What can you do?

Right, exactly. I mean, there's sometimes in this, no, no reasoning with it. Adults, Oh, we go on the internet with the yam writing fantasy podcast. Um, so I actually was quite a, what should I call it? Please or whatever. I should come. I posted one of our teaser post in the am writing fantasy Facebook group. Uh, and, and it just got a lot of cool comments. So I thought I would read a few of them out loud here because I thought it was quite cool.

That'd be good. It's a which post, is it? You have to read the post too. Yeah. So the post was a habit character catch a cold or possibly in the next chapter. Oh, right. I remember that one. Yeah. And then after that I basically asked people if they could come up with something funnier that could happen to the character. And then I didn't really expect that many wonderful suggestions and funny replies. But uh, I think people really, they took it really seriously and just started typing away.

So that was really awesome. So I thought I could just read some of them up here. Uh, so Curt was the first one in there and he basically put like three different suggestions. And the first one was having have the character cats are called are, possibly a fish. That's all you, there's just like this really dry humor. I thought that was funny. Yeah. And of course we also have had Jason in there. I was always saying that he was going to pass on commenting on this one because he's next chapter is when the character is giving his quest by the emperor and to sneeze upon the Imperial person is death.

I mean that was a good idea not to give the character called, yeah, I might want to skip on that. Of course he could be. So trained to suppress a sneeze and Oh, the tension. Cool. Yeah, that's true. Uh, and David also said that, uh, my main character was posted by a salt made from gobbling touch steel and he is suffering from the effects. So his body is weeping. A deputy pasta turns the skin into a hard cross. The scap that spreads when it onto foreskin will transform into an Auckland creature unrecognizable from his original self.

You know, it's fantastic. Yeah. So that there was a lot more comments than the store. Thank you everybody for contributing. I really liked that.

Autumn (11m 54s): The uh, there's definitely been a few more. Like I said, I was moving and settling in so I haven't read all of those, but now I have to go in and check. So that's all in the uh, amwritingfantasy a group on Facebook. So I'm going to go look. It's funny cause I wasn't there earlier. Um, because now when we're recording this, it is still November and then no, right. Moe is in full swing and I've been just loving, you know, some of the updates like day seven, how you doing? And that's already got 22 comments on it and people chiming in about, you know, how their word count, someone who got their seven day streak badge, Christiana Christiann and so, you know, congratulations.

And I just love the support. Even Melanie who said she's not doing well, but she had to finish a whole bunch of other stuff. So I just, yeah, it makes me feel good to see everyone chiming in and contributing and supporting each other as we go through NaNoWriMo and you share the experience and that's always, you know, what sort of what we're talking about today. So I don't want to jump ahead to social media networks but definitely I love whenever I need some encouragement or just to see good people helping each other out.

I love going into the amwritingfantasy group and yeah, it always cheers me on that.

Jesper (13m 13s): Yeah, I was just about to say also, uh, I think there, there is a really good tone in there. You know, people, there was no, nobody is nasty to each other, nobody's any, you know, they're just helpful, nice people. So I really like to see that. And of course if anybody's listening and have not joined the amwritingfantasy group, you just go to the group session and search by amwritingfantasy and you will, you'll be let in.

Autumn (13m 36s): Yeah. And we'd love to have more, more great writers there. So it's, it's definitely just a wonderful place to be.

Jesper (13m 48s): So in covering social media networks for writers that we love the most I don't know, maybe we should alternate a bit here. Autumn so that it's just like not one, one of us doing a long monologue. And then the other one, maybe we just go back and forth a bit on, on one at a time.

Autumn (14m 5s): That sounds perfect. So do you want to go ahead and get started? I can pay rent.

Jesper (14m 11s): Yeah. And I think maybe, um, maybe as, as we go through each one, maybe we try to give a bit of reasoning why, why we have those on the list. Uh, so, but, but maybe before I give my first one, I just haven't honorable mentioned and I want to share because it's, it's not really a social media platform, but, so it cannot go onto this office, your list here. But, but since it's just an awesome place to pick up new knowledge about writing and marketing and all that I wanted to mentioning and that is of course podcasts. You know, I guess you am now I'm talking to you at the are listener already know that since you're listening to this podcast.

Well, but if you do search your podcast app, you might be surprised to find a lot of great podcasts about writing and publishing. I listened to a lot of them myself and Andrew is really a lot of good stuff out there that, that you can listen to. So I just wanted to mention that upfront here. Now before we get started. It's always a good suggestion. All right. So I can start out here. Um, and I have three platforms in the total. Okay.

But then I also have two bonus ones that I can keep afterwards. We'll just see how far we get. But definitely you, you pick your first, your top one. Yeah. Okay. Um, so the first one on my list here is one that I, I do have some issues with it. You know, privacy on the internet is a topic that I'm quite concerned with ms.

Autumn (15m 42s): So perhaps you can almost guess what social media platform I'm about to mention here. Autumn Oh, I'm trying to decide if it's Facebook or Twitter knowing you, but with this, with the privacy concerns, I'm going to say Facebook. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean it's, it's Facebook. So I guess you could say it's the, it's the one that I love to hate.

Jesper (16m 5s): I think honestly, if we were not running a, an author business here, I would not be on Facebook. I don't trust Facebook. Sorry. That's, that's the truth. What I know. But that said, you know, from a social media platform point of view, Facebook has the largest audience of any of them out there. And not to mention the ability that you get to run Facebook ads with quite good targeting tools. I mean, probably the best targeting tools in the world at the moment. So there's no way around it that it's just an absolutely awesome social media tool for authors.

Uh, so, and, and of course we just talked about the amwritingfantasy Facebook group. I do love that one. So it's not all bad. That's true in our kids, of course, that's a group of fellow authors, but there's no reason why you cannot have a group for Rita's if that's what you want.

Autumn (16m 55s): So absolutely. That's my first one. Yeah. I mean, you know, I have a love mostly hate feeling towards Facebook. I don't know if, if I wasn't an author, I don't know if I'd be on it. And in fact I joined just because I became an author. And so I've always, I've only only ever thought of it, I don't think of it as, um, a place I'd go on to hang out as a person to stay up to date with friends and family. To me, it's like I've go on because I'm doing writing stuff and it's just, just another tool as a writer.

But I will say that the interaction and the amwritingfantasy group that is, it makes me realize that it is an awesome tool. When you find a really good group and you get involved and you pay attention, there definitely are some bonuses, I'll admit it, but it's grudgingly because there's many other things. And again, I don't, I don't feed it, I don't put in a lot of love and soul and time into Facebook cause I just have some now just makes me feel icky. But I do try to stop into the amwritingfantasy group.

So I kind of agree with you there. But I think my top and favorite social media platform for personal and as an author and meeting other authors and meeting readers is actually Instagram.

Jesper (18m 11s): Yeah, I had a feeling that would be on your list. I like the picture. So yeah, I mean I've been, I'm incredibly visual. Uh, you have a graphic artist background, so I love seeing pretty pictures, but it's also, it's the hashtags. Am you're allowed 30 hashtags, which is a lot, but I love how it's sorta like Twitter where you can search by hashtags, super easy.

Autumn (18m 31s): You can follow hashtags. So, and the am books diagram, which is the, basically the biggest hashtag for readers, and there's a ton of one like am reading fantasy and fantasy reader fantasy book series. There's all of these other ones that you know, you can just target those, meet other people. Then there is a whole bunch of author ones like amwritingfantasy and fantasy author, fantasy writer, indie writer. So you start targeting those and you meet other writers and there's lots of follow loops, Friday follow loop where you can then meet a whole bunch of other writers, authors, bloggers.

They're not, they're not exclusive. They're very inclusive and they're like, you like books. You're, whether you're a writer, whether you're a blogger, a book blogger, it's just fantastic. And then you get to see really pretty pictures of other people's books and yeah, so definitely been one of my favorites. Yeah. Dude, do I have a feeling of, uh, I mean, because I think at least a while back at least I was talk about how Instagram might be a bit easier to get into them to get some traction on, I should say, rather than the other platforms.

Jesper (19m 39s): Because it is a bit newish. I don't even know if we can call it new anymore but, but do you have a feeling if that's true or is it easier to get engagement on on Instagram compared to many other places? I think so. If you reach out and talk to other people, they get back to you very quickly. Um, I mean I have over 2000 followers, which I think I grew my Twitter followers a lot faster than I'm going my Instagram ones.

Autumn (20m 3s): But they seem very interactive and very talkative. Um, you end up in conversations, they're very easily and it's also a younger crowd. I think the Facebook ones are 40 plus an older, more with some younger ones because we feel like we have to be on there because it's so big. Instagram is, you know, the J K Rowling's a 20 somethings a teenagers, the 30 somethings, they're on Instagram. And so I'm meeting a lot of very young voices and very just excited and dynamic.

And I think that's sort of maybe the difference. Do you think it can be used to generate sales, so to sell books and stuff? Possible, do you think? I think so. More like an engagement platform. No, I mean there's am obviously your Facebook ads can now be placed on Instagram and I do see those. I do see people, you know, mentioning the free book offers and people share them like hotcakes, you know, they'd help spread the word really. It reminds me of Twitter and I'm sure we'll get to Twitter. That reminds me of her away when I was younger.

But um, when I first joined Twitter, it has this kind of vibe that Instagram has now where it's super helpful, super nice people that are really, of course you still get your creeps in, your spammers, you've got to watch out for those are everywhere. But in general, my experience there has been super positive and yeah, I think it's a fantastic place. And I do think you can, you can definitely hit find readers and you can definitely find book bloggers who want to talk about your book and you can network with people really solidly.

And so yeah, I think you probably can sell books, but the very least you can find the networks to be able to sell more books. They're right, but can you post links with your pictures on Instagram? So can you direct people to somewhere else? It helps to have a short link so you, unless you're paying for an advertisement, it is not a clickable link. So what most people do is they have it in their bio, like a, there's something called dry tree. Yeah. Yeah. If you click on my bio link tree link, it actually then list four or five different buttons so I can direct people through that to wherever I want him to go.

Jesper (22m 11s): Okay, cool. Yeah, because basically when I, when I run our Facebook ads and whatnot, I, I can definitely see if I run them to Instagram, that performance is a lot worse than if I just run them on Facebook. So that was why I was wondering a bit about how efficient you, you view it as an advertising platform.

Autumn (22m 29s): I think as advertising and my PC, a waste of money, it is more being on there and being a member of the community that makes it different than organically kind of grow it and get other people to share it and spread the word all right. Right. Okay, cool. So what's your next one? What's number two? Yeah, so number two on my list is Twitter.

Jesper (22m 55s): One of those two would be your top two. So I guess this, this is too easy for you to get these five known you for a minute. Maybe you kind of guessed the next one. We'll see. Yeah, we'll say, yeah, I post a lot, a lot on Twitter. I mean really a lot and I gauge with a lot of people there as well. And I, I really like it as a platform. I think it's, it's, it's, it's an easy way to communicate with people. It doesn't take much. And also because of the, let's say RADA short messages or the tweets that cannot be too long.

I kind of like you, you kind of dipping in and out of conversations here and there. It's, it's like a, like a cocktail party thing. We're just going around. You're dipping in here and there where you want to and on, on Twitter ads. That's perfectly fine. You know, you can, as long as you keep on topping, you can, you can sort of bought into other people's talk conversations about and whatnot. And it's, it's very informal and I like that. Um, and I, I have sold some books from being on Twitter, but not a lot a I, and honestly, I don't think it's the best place to connect with readers if, if that's what you're looking to do.

But what I will say is that if you're trying to expand your network and meet fellow authors, then I think it's excellent. I mean, there was a lot of authors on Twitter and it's quite easy to stop some conversations. And then of course some of it will develop an and whatnot and you'll talk more and more to the same people over time. And I think on bet sort of one to one conversation basis, Twitter's probably one of the best platforms out there. Yeah, I think I used to be my favorite used to be my hub, just the way Instagram's become my hubs.

So from Instagram I like feed out to my other feeds because that's usually if you want to get me in person, that's where I am.

Autumn (24m 42s): But, and my Twitter feed is languishing because I don't even go in and check it as much as I used to. But I, that's where I started and I gained a lot of followers pretty quickly and I still, I mean I know you way out paced me cause you've put a lot of time in there still. Yeah. I think I have 52,000 or something like that. Like I'm somewhere in the 2020 fours or something like that cause I just really have not been paying attention. But I do. I remember someone once saying that you will always remember your first thousand followers and you know those were the definitely some of the deepest conversations I had.

But they do. I do remember that is when I first started publishing and the authors, there were the ones that it made me realize how amazing the author network is, how helpful they are. Um, very little pushback and lots of support. And I know that's probably still there, but I just don't connect. And I used to love the humor. Oh my gosh, authors are so snarky in 140 characters and now it's 280 characters. But back in the day when it was 140, they cracked me up.

The funny things that could come up within, so fuel characters. And so that was always my favorite. But I, yeah, the more recent politicizing and other things, it's been hard for me to sort through. So I've kind of neglected my Twitter feed. But that's nice to know that you say it's still there. No. Yeah. But I think a lot of it has to do with, with how you use Twitter. I mean, for example, I never scroll through my, my main feed because if I scroll through the main feat, there'll be a ton of different, uh, you know, the political stuff and all the stuff we don't even want to talk about on this podcast here.

Jesper (26m 26s): But there's going to be a lot of that in the main feed of Twitter. And I'll never scrolled through that. So what I do instead is that, um, uh, once a week I go in and I check, uh, so I use, uh, who tweet. And within Hootsuite I've set up different cues that for different words. So for example, I have one for fantasy maps. For example, I have one for world building, I have one for fantasy books or something like that. I don't remember them all, but I probably have like 20 of them.

And then I look through those and I see and that just find some interesting stuff that I liked there. And then I comment on that. And, and, and, you know, and today after somebody will reply and then the conversation goes for a bit there. And so it's, I really like actioning it. Like that and, and of course, and then I have, you know, a system set up so that I'm posting our podcast episodes on a regular basis goes out without me having to do it manually and so forth. So that automat automization of course helps.

And if course also helps that if you have well quite a lot of followers than you automatically get a lot more likes in which which and whatnot. But uh, but I would also say, I mean I don't think it matters too much. I mean, maybe I should start a different place, but a while back, I think a lot of people got really hooked up on how many followers you have on this platform and that platform. And honestly, I don't think it matters. Uh, I don't think it matters if you have 2000 followers or 52000 like myself.

I don't even remember the exact number, but around that, I don't think it matters. I think all that matters is how you're using it and, and what, how you engaging with people that that's, that's all that medicine. You can do that just as fine with a thousand followers that you, that you can with 52. I mean I really wouldn't get up hung up on the numbers. It also drives people crazy because then you're chasing the numbers and you're sort of missing the point that it's in the word, right. It's called social media social. It's right there in the world.

So you need to be social there. You're not chasing numbers. So I think that's true.

Autumn (28m 36s): The platforms were mentioning it's really about forming a network and putting the time and him being there. Because I know, I remember when I was on Twitter and people were complaining about it, just everyone on there seem to be bots. Um, but it's, you know, when you find a real person and you can actually really talk to them. And that is key I think with any platform that it isn't the numbers, it is actually putting in the time and finding friends. Basically it's, it's like Chino choosing your favorite cafe or your favorite bar. You're going there because of the atmosphere because it feels right because it's people you want to talk to.

And if you're just in there because you want to be looked at or you want other people to, you know, put you up on the stage and, and follow you, you're not going to get the same experience. No, I agree. Okay. Do you have one more? Yeah. Well, let's see. That's a tough one because I definitely, like I said, I start with Instagram. It's if I have time, because time is so huge. It's where I go. But there are a few other ones. Like I've recently joined a writers' groups on mighty network, so there's a couple on there. It's a more of a new network.

Um, it's what you got to watch for because you can join for free and join some groups and be able to interact, but then they can have certain areas that you have to pay for. It's one of those ones that has some hidden subscription areas. And so you do have to watch that. Those always, Kenny irritate me. It's, yeah. You know, if people want money, I'd rather than be on Patrion and say, Hey, support me here. Then you want access to this, you have to pay for it. It's, yeah, not everything I understand. I mean heck, we run a business, we know, you know, is there a cost to everything, but I like when people are up front about it.

But I will say that there some great interaction. It's sorta reminds me of Instagram where there's, um, you know, you can have the pictures and then you can have a lot more posts and links and those links are alive. So that's, and again, it's, I followed a group of authors over there that I already liked, so I already, I went with instant friends. It, since it's a smaller community, we can talk a little bit more direct. So that's kinda nice. And I, I've been enjoying that. But if anyone else sort of wants something that's in between Facebook and Instagram and once more talking, if there's look at some of the groups on mighty networks, there are some nice ones.

And like I said, and just try to find one where, you know, it has a vibrant community that doesn't always lurk behind the pay window.

Jesper (31m 2s): Yeah. And I think mighty network was also the one we were looking at at some point with an appreciative we should use that. But uh, I think how well their Facebook group is going, there is no chance that we're moving away from that. Facebook dies at this.

Autumn (31m 17s): But that's okay. You know, it's, it's grown organically and you can't argue with that.

Jesper (31m 23s): No, no indeed. Okay, that's cool. I've never tried a mighty networks. I looked into it a bit when we were considering but the eye, so my knowledge of it is fairly limited. But is it more like, is it more like what I said for Twitter that is good for connecting with other authors and, and building that whole or do you think so it's not like a place where you could sell books in

Autumn (31m 44s): no, it is totally just for networking. I haven't seen anything on there for advertising other than being able to say, Hey, but if you want more of this, you have to pay to get access to it. So I'm not sure how keen I am on that pop though. Let's see. That's where I'm at. It's like, I really like y'all, but I don't think I want to pay to be your friend.

Jesper (32m 7s): No, it's okay. No, I think I'm a, I'm at the same view as you. I mean, if then put people, direct people to Petra on if they, if they really enjoy what you're doing, then uh, and then you can really focus on it too. So I don't know. Yeah. Now on Petra, on you, you, you can give them, of course, you can give them extra content, like, like we try to do on our Petro and page, but you can also give them a special rewards and whatnot. Right. And it feels a bit like, I dunno, it feels a bit icky to me if you're supposed to pay to be on a, on a social media platform.

Okay. On the other hand, to be fair, you could to some degree say the same thing about Facebook, because if you post something, you have to pay Facebook to show it to your followers. Right? So in that way, I guess you can say that's not a true different, but

Autumn (32m 51s): no, and I was gonna say am if you're already, it kind of gets you already on that because you're there to talk to people and then you can, if you do go into the special access airy gives you just like an extension instead of a whole different website. But I haven't explored that territory because I just, I just haven't, I feel like that's not why I'm there on the social media. I'm just there to network, so I, I owe, everyone has something to learn, but I just don't feel like paying for it right now.

So do you want, what's your number three then? You said you had three?

Jesper (33m 26s): I have three and two bonus ones. So my number three is YouTube.

Autumn (33m 31s): Oh really? I should have guessed that. Because you have had a YouTube channel for we have had, yeah. Well you started before me for two years and then we teamed up for a year and we still keep it going even though it's now mostly this podcast. So that's interesting. So what do you like about you

Jesper (33m 50s): as a social networking now? Yeah, so, so I, I'm also a bit conflicted with this one, but I think I'm coming at this right now from the point of view as North of course. Um, and as you said, you know, we ran a YouTube channel for a while together as well, and then we converted into like a full on podcasts like we're doing now and I, I very much do not regret that decision one bit. I mean I think we did the right thing.

Yeah. You 100% agree. Yeah. So, so the YouTube channel is still alive in the sense that we upload a version of this podcast to the YouTube channel in case some people wants to listen on YouTube. So that's absolutely fine. It's not a lot of extra work for us to just to upload that there. So we do that. But that aside, you know, just because we and I and we were not able to make it work for us, does not mean that it's not a very viable platform for authors.

Because I have seen a lot of YouTube channels run by authors who have excellent success with it. It was built and huge audience on YouTube by uploading videos there. And I think why I have it on my list here is because I firmly believe in the power of video, and I know I've said this to you in our private chats many times as well beforehand, you know that, but when, when we just can see you on camera, it just builds another level of trust and connections.

So,

Autumn (35m 23s): and so do you see authors using this as a way of networking with other authors are a way of trawling in readers? What are they, what are the ones you see that are successful? What are they doing? I, I, I've seen

Jesper (35m 34s): both. Um, I, I the most of them that I see. So in that sense you can say that is a parallel to podcasting here as well. It's, it's, it's a lot easier to have a podcast or YouTube channel that talks about, you know, advice for authors. So like we do here we are authors talking to other authors about something specific, Ali on how to do am marketing and selling books and all that stuff. That's a lot easier because you have a lot of how to stuff that you can discuss.

Whereas as fiction it becomes a bit more difficult because, okay, what are you supposed to talk about? You know, if you just upload videos, uh, about, uh, you're talking about a different character or whatnot, you know, then for the random viewer who will just come across you in the search on YouTube, they probably wouldn't engage, not because they have no clue who you are. I said they wouldn't care. But I have seen a few am where they talk sort of about their writing process, but not in the way that they talk about advice for authors, but more a bit more angled to what a reader.

So they just talk about how they write and what they're thinking about and, and that sort of thing. Which and this is probably where the wheel fell off. For you have to be extremely good at creating very, very engaging content in on video because actually on YouTube, you know, if, if, if there's just like 30 seconds where people get bought the click away. Yeah. So it's, at least in my view, and maybe some other people will be, we'll find YouTube to be very easy to use, but at least in my view it's incredibly difficult.

Um, but, but if you can make it work, I mean it is one of the biggest search engines in the world. So it is, yeah. I don't think you can neglect it. Okay.

Autumn (37m 33s): Yeah, it makes me make me want to go back and like I used to do a lot of blogging and talk, you know, targeting readers and talking about my process and to be, it seems almost easier than I'm sitting there and typing it all out, but just doing a vlog and putting it on my website. But yeah, I know we've, I've been there with you and there's no way I'm going to be producing something with B roll and special effects. You gotta be a film major. I'm sorry you are a specialist.

Jesper (38m 2s): It is. It is a lot of work. And there was, of course, there was also a lot of competition on YouTube, so it's not easy.

Autumn (38m 10s): Yeah. That's why I thought should know if I linked it with my website and my existing blog, that might be an actually a pretty cool way of getting it going again because goodness knows I've been neglecting it and if people liked it so much this year, but 2020 is coming up, I will get better. 2019. I can't wait till it's over.

Jesper (38m 30s): There's one of the, uh, one of the authors on who's a email list I'm on, uh, he to actually in the emails that he sends out, he sends out a, uh, a video. So not in all of them, but in most of them, he, he had some video where he's talking about something and that actually, I mean, again, of course it's a lot more work, but it works pretty well because in the email you get a video of him talking about something that's pretty clever. But again, it's a lot of work so.

Or think about the, the F yeah. Ooh, go to back to that one. Anyway, we're on social networks, so I think I've got a runner up for my three like two different ones because to ones that I'm engaged with, what I used to be really engaged with. What Pat, it was great. I actually have my books and a lot of short stories and stuff posted there and I just haven't been keeping it up.

Autumn (39m 21s): But it was so much fun to network with readers. I mean a lot of the time you're literally targeting readers, some of them might be other authors, but what Pat is all about finding readers and that is just, it's perfect. And they're younger readers mostly, I mean 13 two twenties that's, if that's your target audience, you should be on what pad. And if you're an author that's just getting your feet wet and you want a lot of feedback from like beta readers, uh, what pad? It's free.

They have some levels now where you can pay for stuff, but it's just dynamic and amazing. And I really, every time I think about it like I've got to get back into Wattpad and it's just, yeah I need to be focused. I have this goal of getting back into like just diving into one or two serious social media networks. And the other one, the one that I've recently actually even took it online training that you targeted am and you sent to me was good reads a good ratio. Yeah. You sent me an email that there was this KTP cause some say animal Amazon owns it.

They were having a like basically hack good reads for authors and I sat in on that and it was, there was stuff I did not know. Some really cool ways of talking with readers. Um, sharing your favorite passages, why you wrote some things, what inspired you, how to make that more of a social media site. Not even going into the forums, which I, my husband and I have this argument all the time. I really hate forums. There's no pictures in forums. They're just there. At least it's like something they made in the 1980s when people are still typing dos and using all of the horrible there.

So aesthetically pleasing. Yeah, I don't do forums. So the good reads forum is like, you know, I go there and I'm like, Oh I just went into the swamp of despair and I don't want to stay here. But there's other parts of good reads that are much more interactive and ways of talking to readers and that I wasn't truly using. And so I've told myself I'd go into good reads every day and try to do something and I haven't been, but it's been a busy week. But we'll get, I do have that goal and maybe I should put what Pat on that once I have good reads and get back into it.

But definitely if Wattpad and good reads, if you are looking to target readers, those are my two that say learn to use those. If you've got questions am I'm getting good at one and I used to be pretty awesome at the other one. Awesome enough that people would actually be emailing me, asking how I got so many likes and comments on chapters as I released them. So apparently I was doing something right and what Pat and die, I left it for some reason. Yeah, well it happens. It does.

Well I think you still have your two runners up, so come on. We still have a few. I have the final two bonuses yet I put them on bonus list because a, I'm not using these myself so I didn't think it was fair to uh, to basically put them on the official list.

Jesper (42m 15s): But as bonuses I wanted to mention them because I think they are they important? Um, the first one is NaNoWriMo. I've never done a rhino myself, but I understand that there is a lot of support that you can get there. And I don't know if this is like the old school forum stuff that we just mentioned or not, but I think there's a lot of engagement between people there. So I think if you're looking for some encouragement and, and want to do join a lot, and I mean really a lot of other authors, 8,000 words in the month of November, then I think not over, I'm a might be a thing that is worth checking out and don't forget there is now is the June or July camp NaNoWriMo.

So if you do a summer one, and I think it's a little bit lower pressure.

Autumn (43m 1s): So if the 50,000 words scares you, try camp one in the summer. And yeah, I've never done it either because I know I could write a book. Um, and I know I do not want to put that much pressure on myself because I would take it way too seriously and freak out and be upset and yeah, my whole life would collapse because I have to write so many words a day. So I've never done it. But I, I love, I love the encouragement. I love everyone doing it together and I kind of feel left out and like, I want to do it one of these days.

So, uh, yeah. And the other bonus that I have, you actually already mentioned, Oh, it's good reads. Uh, because I think that is also when there's a lot of readers on good reads. So I think it's important. 9 billion readers on good reads or not, not 9 million. Sorry. It is just amazing the amount of readers. Um, yeah, it's, I'm trying to learn it because seriously it is an amazing platform if you can figure it out.

Jesper (44m 3s): Yeah, that's the thing again. And of course as we also talked about in uh, in a previous podcast a while back, I mean I still don't know what it is that Amazon wants to do with good reads, but maybe we'll figure that out one day. I still cannot quite work out if it's just a, if they'd just asked her the data and the reader list or what they offer, I'm not quite sure. But it is weird how they have not done any updates on, on good reads or changed anything and after they purchase is just to shame seems shitty, shitty looking

Autumn (44m 32s): website. It does need a refresh. But there are some cool trips, ticks and trips and talk tips and tricks you can do with it that maybe we should talk about one of these days. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Did you have any more on your list or is that it? That's it for me. I think I, I'm happy with that. That's pretty much the key I think we covered.

Jesper (44m 56s): Excellent. So I think just in in rounding off here. Just wanted to add a few last words. I want just once just to tell you, dear listener, you know, don't, we mentioned a lot of different social media platforms here, but please don't go out and try to be everywhere. You know you're going to kill yourself and then just pick one or two social media sites that you already like and then learn how to master those and then expand later on as, as, as those become second nature and easy for you to do.

So it's really not worth killing yourself over with stress from trying to be everywhere on every social media platform out there. I mean, social media is important, but it's not so important that it's going to make or break your writing career as an author. No, not as much as actually not being on social media and writing her book.

Autumn (45m 49s): So talk, go crazy and spend all your time on social media. Yep. That's the final words. And next Monday, autumn and I will be back to discuss the all important book description, also known as the book.

Narrator (46m 5s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.